


Tomorrow Is Eternal

by NancyTWriter



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe, Intrigue, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-03
Updated: 2019-11-14
Packaged: 2021-01-21 11:51:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 47,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21299012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NancyTWriter/pseuds/NancyTWriter
Summary: Skilled thief Dean Winchester meets government agent Cas diAngelo, and what started as an exciting affair becomes a game of romance and intrigue, life and death.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 26





	1. Chapter 1

“Supernatural” is copyrighted by Warner Brothers Entertainment Inc. The song “Tomorrow Never Dies,” by Sheryl Crow and Mitchell Froom, is copyrighted by A&M Records.

[Author’s Note: SPNHoffen, the outstanding fan video creator on YouTube, should be listed as the co-author of this story. Her AU video, “Tomorrow Never Dies – Destiel Agent!AU,” perfectly sets up the beginning and ending of an intriguing story. I wrote the middle and put a twist on the end. I strongly suggest watching it, partly because I think it’d be fun to see some of the story’s scenes come to life, but also because it’s just a great video.

[Thanks to: Brian, who gave me great help with guns, fighting, and male dialogue in my last two stories; Halen of Magnolia at Best Buy in Overland Park, Kansas; Charles W. Gordon Jr., outstanding attorney for the Department of Labor; my brother, who no longer even blinks when I text to ask him something like the results of an acid bath on human bones; and all the friendly folks at Freddy’s in Overland Park!

[This story is dedicated to my mother, who died while I was writing it. She was the first person to encourage my writing, and did so all through her life. She was an outstanding wife, mother, and public servant, and I miss her.]

“Family,” Dean Winchester had said, with that charming smile that only looked sad if it lingered too long. “It all comes down to family.”

Castiel had returned the smile. “True. Even when the family isn’t related by blood.”

“You sound like Uncle Bobby. I don’t know, though. You’ve got bonds to people you grow up with that you just don’t have with anyone else.”

Cas started to say something, stopped. Instead, he said, “You have to forge the bonds. Other things take the place of growing up together. Commitment, common purpose. Love.”

“Just – pick out someone to love? And that’s your family?”

“If they’re worthy of love, yes.”

Dean’s head had tipped back. It was almost a nod and almost a reaction to an uppercut.

After a moment he’d said, “Yeah, well. That’s the catch, isn’t it?”

Cas had rolled over, put his hand over Dean’s heart, and looked into his eyes. “You are worthy of love.”

But that had been eight days ago. And in Castiel’s line of work, eight days was a lifetime.

He knelt beside Dean’s sprawled form, putting the gun on the floor, and gathered Dean up. Dean’s shirt and jacket were soaked with scarlet, but there were only a few dots on his face. His eyes were open and, like the rest of him, unmoving. Castiel could hear the other agents’ footsteps running down the hall.

“Well,” Dean had said, putting his own hand over Cas’ heart. “If you say it, it must be true.”

But that had been eight days ago. And now Dean Winchester would never say anything, ever again.

“They’re planning an attack,” Charlie had said, sixteen days before. She was looking back and forth between two video relays. “I don’t think you should go back in there.”

“It’s never a good idea to jump to conclusions.” Castiel was looking at the same screens. “Whoever he is, he may just be running late. He may be doing it as a power play. It might be an indication of his confidence in how much they need him and his operation.”

“Or it could be that Mom just got some bad intel,” Kelvin said, holstering his weapon after checking it.

Kelvin apparently thought that Naomi didn’t know he called her “Mom” behind her back. Castiel thought it was likely that she did, and that it amused her. “It looks to me like her intel was correct,” Castiel said. “Del Rio and his lieutenants showed up at the time that Naomi thought he would. Balthazar made a point of greeting them personally, and they had a whispered exchange. Balthazar showed them into a room down the hall from the party, and Del Rio’s group has been there ever since, with his soldiers at the door trying to look like caterers – unsuccessfully. Balthazar’s been looking increasingly tense for twenty minutes.”

“Because he knows they’re planning an attack,” said Charlie. “It does us no good to find out who Del Rio’s meeting with if the guy’s people come in and kill Del Rio and everyone else at the party.”

“Don’t forget that Balthazar has armed security himself,” Castiel said. “I’m inside and armed, Kelvin has a good post outside and he’s armed. If the party that Del Rio is meeting with is planning a murderous double-cross, they won’t get far.”

“I’m heading back,” Kelvin said, rising. “I’m gonna do a sound check when I get outside the van.”

Castiel nodded, pulling his phone and dialing a number. Kelvin slipped out of the van, which was made to look like a power-company vehicle. Hozai was in the bucket in the air, pretending to work with the transformer on a power pole, keeping a lookout on surrounding streets.

“Charlie worries too much,” Kelvin said from outside the van.

“Roger that,” Castiel replied into his phone.

“Roger that,” Hozai said from up above.

“Somebody has to!” Charlie said.

Remarkable what technology could do if you had the money for it, Castiel reflected as he strolled up the long drive to the double front doors of Balthazar’s mansion, Sea Pines. They could talk over their communication system without fear of hackers. The microphone that transmitted his conversations back to the electronics-loaded van was hidden in a small American-flag pin on his lapel.

Balthazar was standing at one side of the door; one of Del Rio’s goons, holding an empty tray, stood nearby. The host smiled cheerfully as Castiel mounted the steps to the door, but there was still tension around his eyes. “Cas. I forgive you for leaving if you were having a very good time with someone.”

“Unfortunately, no.” Castiel moved into the light and sound that spilled onto the large front porch through the open doors. “Beautiful night, beautiful neighborhood. I took a walk.”

“Cas, you’ve got to loosen up sometime. You would drive the boys wild.”

Cas smiled a little. “Not sure I could handle all that. I’m just enjoying the conversation and your excellent food.”

Balthazar was distracted by a red Mustang pulling up the foot of the steps, and Cas followed his gaze. A very good-looking man in a tuxedo got out and talked with the valet, then walked around to the passenger side of the car and opened the door for a beautiful woman in a rippling black dress and spectacular necklace – might not have been real diamonds, but spectacular nonetheless. Balthazar smiled in recognition at the woman, but the tension was still in his face.

Cas started back inside. “Thanks again for inviting me, Balthazar.”

Even as he smiled and waved at the woman, Balthazar tossed three words over his shoulder. “Loosen up, Cas.”

Balthazar came from money. The grandeur of Sea Pines’ exterior was his great-grandfather’s contribution; the abstract Expressionist art and Art Deco fixtures were Balthazar’s. He’d spent his youth indulging in one excess after another, and about ten years ago had apparently decided that this background made him perfect to act as host, adviser, and arbitrator for the demimonde and underworld. He considered himself and his mansion to be Switzerland, and often, when he held a party, it was as cover for a meeting between agents of dubious governments or Mafiosi or even between parties to a nasty potential lawsuit.

Cas diAngelo was none of those, of course. Balthazar knew Cas as the assistant to the deputy Under-Secretary of Labor, working for OSHA. Balthazar and Cas had met at a Washington reception, and Cas had charmed him enough that he became a regular guest at Balthazar’s parties.

Cas charmed everyone. It was his job, and he was good at it. He had a low-key, approving persona that allowed people to read into it anything they wanted. Balthazar saw Cas as an almost-closeted bureaucrat who only needed Balthazar’s encouragement to blossom into a heartbreaker and drama-stirrer at parties. A treasonous FBI agent in New York had seen him as a mild and unquestioning errand boy, never realizing – until his arrest – that the errand boy was substituting phony government secrets for the real thing, funneling false information to a hostile foreign power. A guy in California had found in Cas a drinking buddy and sympathetic listener to his increasingly guilt-ridden and self-pitying alcoholic rambles; he and his superiors in a human trafficking ring, shipping women in from Asia, had eventually all been arrested. A white supremacist leader in Idaho had seen Cas as an innocent, eager convert to the cause, and never had figured out how his deal for a half-ton of illegal weaponry had gone so wrong.

His name had been Cas diAngelo then, but it changed with most cases. From time to time he remembered, with some bemusement, the name he’d been born with. The abusive home in which he’d lived as a child, some of the foster homes that had followed, were where he’d learned to be inoffensive and unthreatening, while keeping a sharp eye out for anything disconcerting.

To the task force, he was known only as Castiel. They all knew each other only by one name; only Naomi knew their full names and stories. Castiel had the feeling that her real name might actually be Naomi, since, as leader of the task force, she’d probably been in intelligence long enough that she was widely known by that name. He thought Kelvin might be the man’s middle name or surname, Charlie a name chosen by the woman herself. Hozai was the name of a Biblical king’s historian; why the man was called that, Cas didn’t know.

“Castiel” was completely unbiblical. There was an angel named Cassiel in Jewish and Muslim mysticism sometimes associated with Thursday. Cas had written stories about Cassiel when he was very young, but he put a T in the name because he thought Cassiel sounded too much like a girl’s name. He’d dreamed vaguely of being a priest or a writer – perhaps a priest who wrote best-selling fiction – and had studied the non-scriptural lore of angels as passionately as other kids studied Zelda’s legend. In college, he been working two jobs while studying languages and political science, thinking of becoming a translator, when he’d been approached in friendly discussion by someone who, he realized later, was a member of the U.S. intelligence community. That had been on a Thursday.

The current target of the “task force,” the only name given to the entity for which he worked, was Joe Del Rio. They had identified Del Rio as the drug lord behind massive shipments of heroin to the U.S. via ports all along the southeast coast. He’d overextended himself, though, and word was that he was looking for a friendly investor.

Then an informal glance through Del Rio’s mailbox had revealed a square invitation envelope from Sea Pines. It was very possible that Balthazar was coordinating a meeting between Del Rio and an unknown potential business partner, and Naomi’s intelligence had seemed to confirm that. Castiel, whose cover had been established for months by now, was planning to accidentally bump into Balthazar and remind the host of how charming he could be, when his own invitation arrived in the mail.

Circulating at the party, Castiel had quietly told the others on the task force when Del Rio, and then his lieutenants, arrived. Balthazar had ushered them into a room down a hall that ran from the entrance hall, and had shown Del Rio’s security goons into another room, whence they had emerged wearing caterers’ aprons that barely hid their guns.

So far so good. But they still had no idea who Del Rio was meeting with, and the drug lord and his lieutenants had been cooling their heels for twenty-five minutes now. Charlie was afraid that the would-be partner was actually some rival drug lord who claimed to be interested in the partnership, only to send his soldiers to kill the leaders of the competition and anyone else at the party who got in their way. It sounded unlikely to Castiel, but not impossible. Balthazar’s tension made it clear that the same thought had occurred to him.

The woman with the spectacular necklace and her escort were at the door now. Balthazar was chatting with her, and the other man’s gaze was moving around the room as if he were casing it.

His gaze stopped when his eyes met Castiel’s.

Castiel almost shifted his gaze away, as social protocol demanded. But he couldn’t stop himself from looking right back at the stranger.

The guy’s gaze moved over Cas, a slow smiling appraisal that was doubly confusing.

First: Gay men in the Washington, D.C. area don’t look each other over that obviously. Sure, gay rights, and sure, the Supreme Court was on their side for a hot minute, but there were still too many government-related jobs where being gay meant you were automatically considered a security risk, or a risk to the smooth functioning of bureaucracy. This guy must not have one of those jobs.

And second: What the hell?

Castiel was good looking in a quiet way; he played it up or down as appropriate to the job. But this man looked like a movie star. His short businesslike haircut meant you could see his strong clean jawline and perfect cheekbones from almost every angle. He was slender but not scrawny, a couple of inches taller than Castiel, with light-colored eyes and a sensual mouth. The ogling was going the wrong way.

Curious, Castiel kept looking at the stranger until the man’s gaze moved back up to meet his own.

And Cas suddenly realized that the man’s smile was sad. It was a beautiful smile on a beautiful face, so it took him a moment to realize the sadness in it. Maybe some people never saw it.

The stranger looked at Balthazar, laughed in response to something Balthazar had said, and Cas felt like the room’s temperature had just dropped twenty degrees.

He stabilized himself, looked down the hall where Balthazar had led Del Rio and his men. 

After a couple of days’ effort, Charlie had tapped into Balthazar’s security system; the video feeds in the van were coming from the mansion’s own security cameras. They perfect views of the back door and the entrance hall at the front door. They had two good views of the huge main room of the party, where a live band had just yielded to a DJ and a dance floor was bordered on three sides by tables and chairs and on the fourth side by the bar.

Even if search warrants hadn’t been a problem – the task force wasn’t above breaking the law, but liked to stick to the rules when possible – it would have been impossible for them to have bugged every one of the rooms in Sea Pines in advance of the meeting. Castiel had a microphone in his pocket, and now that he knew in which room the meeting would happen, he had to figure out a way – 

The stranger couldn’t be the one meeting with Del Rio. Could he?

Well, the guy had overtly ogled Castiel. It wouldn’t be illogical to wander over and try to strike up an acquaintance. Very easy, with Castiel’s training, to slip a microphone into the other man’s pocket.

The couple was heading toward the bar, but paused to look around the room and hold a quick conversation. Nothing about their body language or faces said they were romantically involved. If he was using her as a beard, he should stop ogling other men. But to Castiel they seemed more like business partners socializing as part of a plan to win the Zinkley account.

He waited until the man went to the bar to get the couple’s drinks, then followed him and slid in next to him, saying to the bartender, “Club soda with lime, please.”

Then he deliberately looked at the man, smiled, and said, “I’m Cas. And I’m sure I’d have remembered if I’d seen you at any of Balthazar’s parties before.”

The man raised his eyebrows a little at Cas’ directness; he could only imagine the expressions on Kelvin’s and Hozai’s faces. He didn’t like the obviousness of wearing an earbud, so he had to imagine what they were saying, too.

The man replied with a smile. “I’m Dean. She got me here – ” he bobbed his head at the woman – “by promising me that Balthazar’s parties are wild. So far it seems like I put on this monkey suit to chit-chat with lobbyists.”

“The first half of the evening is usually socializing and networking, with live music. You see the DJ setting up? That’s when things start to get very free-wheeling.”

Dean looked amused. “Very free-wheeling, huh?” He leaned into Cas a bit, lowered his voice as if about to say something exciting. “Gonna have an extra lime with that club soda?”

He grinned, scooped two drinks off the bar, and left Cas chuckling ruefully. Yeah, he’d left himself wide open for that one.

Dean joined his date by the staircase, where she was chatting with the owner of a boat-building company. The staircase was on the opposite side of the entrance hall from the hallway where Del Rio’s party was waiting. Neither Dean nor the woman seemed interested in getting there.

There were some paintings hanging in the hallway that led to the meeting room. Castiel had just decided to develop an interest in modern art when he noticed Balthazar. The host was listening intently to a phone call, plugging one ear to block the sound of the DJ’s amplifiers beginning a thumping beat. Balthazar listened for a moment, then tossed back his head and laughed.

So far they hadn’t been able to hack Balthazar’s phone, so Charlie wouldn’t know the contents of the call. Cas turned his back to the room, examining a small erotic statue on a side table, and said quietly, “Host just got a phone call, looks relieved.”

He looked around again, took a sip of his club soda. Balthazar was heading down the hall to the meeting room. Cas guessed that the room was secured against signals going in or out, so Balthazar was about to break whatever news he’d received to Del Rio.

“Hey, Cas!” Ted, a guy he knew from another office in the Frances Perkins Building, the Department of Labor headquarters; they ate together in the cafeteria sometimes. Cas would rather have followed Balthazar, but couldn’t have got very far, and anyway he never missed a chance to keep his cover in trim. He greeted Ted cheerfully. They talked about how each of them knew Balthazar, then were joined by Ted’s wife Susan, and the couple told Cas a funny story about her visiting parents being startled by the rolling mail-delivery robot in the Perkins Building.

He managed, as they talked, to shift his stance enough to see the hallway to the meeting room. Balthazar emerged into the main hall with Del Rio and his lieutenants. The lieutenants were looking sour, but Balthazar and Del Rio seemed in good spirits, Balthazar waving toward the bar as if inviting them to stay. Del Rio shook his head, said something that made Balthazar laugh. One of the gunsels joined them, and Del Rio said something. The gunsel whipped off his caterer’s apron, handed it to Balthazar, and went off, presumably to tell the others that they could ditch their aprons too.

“Just a little obvious,” Susan said. She and Ted were looking at a lobbyist for movie distributors who was standing at the bar getting drinks for himself and two slender women wearing sequined, skin-tight dresses.

“The brunette doesn’t look too much like a pro,” Ted said.

“It could be that they’re just good friends of his,” Cas said with his most innocent look. Susan giggled, and Ted said, “Missed your calling, Cas. Should’ve gone with the State Department.”

He felt a burr against his chest, his phone ringing. He looked just a little annoyed as he pulled the phone out of his breast pocket. “Will you excuse me? I have to take this.”

It wasn’t suspicious looking at all; at that moment there were four other partygoers standing in the entrance hall and party room demonstrating their importance by taking phone calls at a party. He moved a little closer to a wall as he said, “Hello?”

“It’s a wash.” Kelvin’s voice. “We’re wrapping up.”

“Do we know why?”

“You know Jack Marin?”

A prominent Maryland mobster. “Not personally.”

“He was on our short list for Del Rio’s possible investors, so we asked the FBI to call us if he went anywhere unusual. They keep an eye on him anyway, not heavy-duty surveillance, they just like to know where he goes. Tonight an ambulance came to his house and went straight to Mary Washington Hospital. Our fed friends made some discreet inquiries, figuring, you know, Marin’s pissed someone off.”

“Logically.”

“Yeah. But no. Tonight Marin told the chauffeur to bring the car to the front door, but told no one – no one – where he was going. Even the chauffeur said Marin had just said he’d give him the destination when he got in the car. Then he’s running out the door to the car, falls off the front porch, broken leg and a concussion.”

Castiel’s face stayed straight, but his chest vibrated with a quick laugh.

“Marin wakes up in the hospital saying he has to get to a meeting. The doctors – and his wife – told him it wasn’t happening, so he talked to the chauffeur alone in the hospital room. Chauffeur goes down to the car, gets on his own phone, and makes a call. This was about ten minutes ago.”

“Ah.” That was when Balthazar had received the call that gave him such relief.

“The fed at the hospital called his boss, his boss called Mom and said, ‘Is this the kind of unusual thing you’re looking for?’ She said yes thank you very much, let’s keep in touch. So at least we know who the would-be investor is. No big merger, but no home invasion with a firefight either. Just an asshole with a concussion.”

Castiel’s lips twitched. “Anatomically disconcerting.”

“We’re packin’ it in. You?”

“I’m enjoying myself. I won’t be back too late.”

Charlie’s voice said, “I’m keeping eyes on you until you leave.”

“That’s not – ”

“I say it’s necessary.”

“All right, then. I’ll catch you later.”

He disconnected and put his phone away. Time to enjoy himself like a Washington bureaucrat at a party full of rich and powerful people. He moved back toward Ted and Susan – they weren’t rich and powerful, but they were good company – but he cast his gaze around the room as if checking out the other attendees.

Dean was nowhere in sight, though.

Dean opened the door of Balthazar’s home office and gave a quick bob of his head to Bella, who was standing in the hall admiring paintings. She dropped her feigned interest instantly, darting into the office with Dean.

“Are we sure the camera isn’t working?” she whispered.

“We are now. The camera’s triggered by the motion sensor, that’s what I was taking care of while you were falling in love with Expressionists. If the motion sensor doesn’t sense anyone moving around, the camera doesn’t go on. That’s not the main problem.”

He knelt in front of a safe, three feet high and two feet wide, next to Balthazar’s desk. “This is the main problem.”

“Can you crack it?”

“Depends on how well we can read his mind. I’ve been researching the guy. The problem isn’t that it’s hard to get information about him, it’s that it’s too easy. He goes everywhere, he talks about everything, he knows everyone. We’ve only got five chances at guessing this electronic lock combination before the re-lockers kick in, and at that point – well, you could try explosives, but only if you like watching an eight-hundred-pound safe jump around without coming apart. Actually, that sounds awesome.”

“So we need to guess what’s important enough to him to turn it into a safe combination.” She shook her head. “I didn’t realize – I thought you’d be spinning a dial, listening for tumblers to drop. I didn’t realize it would be so impossible.”

He flashed a merry grin up at her as he used a lockpick on the desk. “Nah, this is fun. Look around the room, see what shows signs of wear, like he refers to it a lot. Books with bookmarks or set aside somewhere, things like that. I’m going to go through his desk. Careful not to touch anything.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to touch a statue of – Oh my God, that’s real!”

Bella’s stressed exclamation sounded funnier with her upper-class British accent. She was looking at a withered but well preserved severed hand in a lighted glass case across the room from the desk.

“Noticed that,” Dean said. He was going through notepads from the desk, surgical gloves not interfering with his dexterity.

“He even knows whose hand it was, there’s a plaque. Someone who was hanged in 1842.”

“A Hand of Glory,” Dean said, glancing over for a moment with interest. “Some people used to think that if you cut off an executed man’s hand while he was still on the gallows and preserved it, it had magical powers.”

Bella made a revolted little sound. “I knew Balthazar was a little outré, but I didn’t realize he was absolutely creepy.”

Dean shot her a glance as he changed notepads. “You’re hiring me to steal. To steal Herman Göring’s gun. For your gun collection. Careful of those stones you’re throwing at your picture windows.”

“It’s not the same thing. Guns have both intrinsic and historic value. They’ve been key in the rise and fall of civilizations for hundreds of years. I have a musket used by Cromwell’s co-commander, a Carcano rifle used by Italians at the Battle of Peking, pistols and rifles from the American West. I want a gun from the Nazi high command because of its historical importance. He wants it so he can tell people, ‘I bought Herman Göring’s gun’ and watch them shudder.”

“Probably right. You’re the one who knows him.” Dean was looking through, and behind, files in the side drawers. “Did you talk to him about his family?”

“He doesn’t like talking about them much, but I did get one thing. I told him my mother’s birthday was near Christmas, and she hated getting fleece-lined everything as birthday gifts. He said, ‘My mother’s birthday is two days before Halloween, but happily she loves the holiday.”

“That explains a lot.” Dean turned to the safe’s electronic keypad, which was laid out like a telephone’s: an asterisk, a hashmark, and ten buttons labeled 1 to 0. The same letters were associated with each digit that were associated with phone buttons.

“I don’t know the year.”

“Doesn’t matter. This kind of safe has a four-digit combination.” He pressed 1029 and tried the door handle, to no avail. “Well, it was worth a try. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t use his own birthday or his address, he’d think that was – ”

“Plebian.”

“That. How about Göring’s birthday?”

She pulled her phone out of her sparkling black clutch. “I’ll look it up.”

While she did, he spun in the chair and looked over the 5,000-year-old Sumerian figurines on the shelves behind the desk, lifting them to look at the bases.

“January twelfth,” Bella reported. Dean pressed 0112, but the door still wouldn’t yield.

“Two down, three to go.”

“We should be thinking about an exit strategy. This is taking so long.”

“For someone who does the kind of work you do, you’re awfully nervy.”

“I’m not nervy,” she snapped. Then her voice warmed and softened, though it sounded like she was having to make an effort to do it. “I just don’t want you to go to prison.”

Dean gave her a heavy dry smile. “I’m sure Dad would think of some way to keep that from happening.” He straightened, laid his gloved hands on the desk as if he owned it. “OK. I’m Balthazar, sitting in my office at the end of a long hard day meeting with spies and seducing twenty-year-old guys. The perfect end to a perfect day? Fondling Herman Göring’s gun. And of course I remember the combination to the safe it’s in, because – ”

He was looking straight ahead of him, at the lighted case. He laughed suddenly. Then, “Yeah, but is it worth one of our three remaining tries? I think so.”

He leaned over and punched 4263 on the safe’s keypad. There was a surprisingly soft click, and Dean pulled the safe door open.

Bella was there in an instant. “How?”

“H, A, N, D,” Dean said with a grin, reaching into the safe. “Yeah, I think this is it.”

He pulled out a shiny wooden box. Inside, lying on burgundy velvet, was a Walther PPK with the initials “HG” in Gothic lettering on the grip.

“Too bad it’s not the gold one.”

Bella laughed. “If I’d wanted you to steal that one, I’d have had to pay you a lot more money. This is a wonderful sample from his collection, though. Not that many with his initials on them.” She was turning it over in her hands delightedly.

“Is it loaded?”

She checked. “No.”

“All right.” Dean pulled a Walther PPK from the back of his waistband and put it in the box. “Your guy did a good job.”

She shrugged. “An expert could tell the difference inside of a minute. I could, in five minutes. But Balthazar will never know the difference. Dean, you are worth every penny, and I don’t say that to many people.”

Having put the case back in the safe exactly as it was and closed the safe door, Dean stood. “No charge. I know this is your birthday present to yourself, so now it’s partly my birthday present to you.”

“Oh, Dean.” She put her arms around him, keeping the gun in a firm grip. After a moment he smiled tolerantly and pulled away.

She looked at him, going from joy to disappointment in a moment. “You’re just doing it to discharge an obligation. You know what I really want. This way you can say I’m too demanding.”

“Bella, a moment ago you couldn’t wait to get out of here, and you had the right idea. Let’s go on back down to the party and find you some guy who appreciates a beautiful woman with a lot of energy.”

“I don’t want any of them. I want you. It wouldn’t kill you to try.” She gave him a sly smile. “I guarantee I could make you feel good.”

“Bella – ” He paused as if a dozen well-worn arguments were running through his mind, but finally just said, “No.”

He held out his hand, and she looked at him as if considering laying his hand next to the one in the case. Then she gave him the gun, and he put it in his waistband where he’d had the replica.

“I’ll leave first,” he said, peeling off the gloves and putting them in his pocket. “If you hear voices in the hall, stay here until I talk them away from the door. If no one’s out there, I’ll tap on the door and we’ll go back downstairs together.”

And that was the way it worked. The drumbeats of Beyonce’s “Crazy in Love” stalked them as they descended the staircase, and Dean began heading for the bar/dance room. She clutched his arm and looked at him angrily.

“Bella, you wanted to make your business contacts,” he said, exactly as if he weren’t aware of a caterer and two guests near them. “You made your contacts, now I’m gonna have some fun. Do you want a drink?”

“No.”

“OK,” he said, and went to the bar.

Castiel, like several other people, was watching with bemusement as the movie-industry lobbyist and his two companions put on a show. The girls were doing a shimmy dance as he stood between them, turning slowly and sipping his drink between gaping grins. A young man and woman, masters of the universe in training, were dancing with greater skill but equal abandon. A pair of women stood by the bar, one leaning back against the other affectionately. Balthazar was across the room, dimming the lights.

“Well, OK, it got a little bit wild,” a voice said in Castiel’s ear. He kept his start minimal, looking around at Dean, but apparently Dean noticed. “Startle you?”

“A little. People usually don’t.”

“Music’s loud,” Dean said, just at the moment that the volume began dying.

Cas turned to him with a smile. “I thought you’d left.”

“No. My friend Bella had big shots she wanted to talk to, so we talked to ’em. I did what she wanted, now I get to do what I want.”

“What big shots?” was the question in Castiel’s mind, but for some reason what came out was, “What do you want to do?”

“I don’t know.” Dean surveyed the floor. “How about a dance?”


	2. Chapter 2

The DJ had switched tempos. Pretty, melancholic strains of music wafted across the floor. The lobbyist and his friends dropped into chairs, and an older couple joined the younger couple in clinches under the dimmed lights.

Cas didn’t know if Dean was serious. “Is that – a challenge?”

“If you need a challenge, yeah. I’m up for it if you are.”

When there was an unexpected turn, Cas usually relied on his instinct. His first instincts were good at telling him what the other person really wanted and how his cover character would respond to that. But he couldn’t trust his instinct this time; it was being shouted down by lust.

That never happened.

He bought time by saying, with a smile, “Do you persuade a lot of bureaucrats to risk their jobs by being indiscreet?”

And the enticing grin dropped off of Dean’s face immediately. “No. Sorry. Would you be risking your job?”

Great. Now his emotions had joined his lust, screaming I want this man.

Just a dance. Not hard to justify. His cover character was circumspect, but not closeted. It was the exact opposite of what a government agent would do, drawing attention to himself. It would practically guarantee an invitation to Balthazar’s next underworld conclave/party.

And he really wanted to do it.

“No, I’m out, no problems at the office.” His lips twitched as he thought about Charlie listening in on this, watching the video feed, her eyes wide.

He stepped onto the floor and extended a hand to Dean, who closed with him in an instant, self-confident and warm.

Dean clearly wanted to lead, so Cas let him. It wasn’t like they were doing any recognizable ballroom dance anyway. They turned in slow circles, stepping to the beat, what he now recognized as Sheryl Crow singing a James Bond theme, “Tomorrow Never Dies.”

“It’s so deadly, my dear,  
“The power of wanting you near . . .”

He should be focusing outward. He should be paying attention to the room. He did it for a moment, when he saw Dean’s companion standing by the bar, without a drink, watching Dean with such a concentrated gaze that she didn’t even seem to see Cas, whose face was right next to Dean’s smooth freshly-shaven cheek. Another step and she was in the corner of his eye, leaving him conscious of Dean’s aftershave, a faint woodsiness over the smell of Dean’s own warmth.

Another step, and any awareness of the room was gone. He could still hear the music, but everything else was the solid feel of Dean’s back under his hand, the promising-frustrating closeness of their bodies, the sensation of their naked hands clasped together.

“Aren’t we supposed to be better at this?” Dean murmured, and Cas laughed. “We should do a twirl, or something.”

“Hang on,” Cas said, and raised their arms, turning before Dean in what might not have strictly been a twirl, but at least was a change in what they were doing.

He moved back to Dean and Dean’s hand shot up behind his back, pulling him close, as if Dean had been afraid Cas would leave.

“Until you say there’ll be no more goodbyes,   
“I see it in your eyes. . . ”

“Dean Winchester. In case you were wondering.”

The murmur was into Cas’ ear, and he responded in kind. “Cas diAngelo.”

“Bureaucrat, huh?”

“I work for OSHA. Assistant to the Deputy Under-Secretary of Labor. And your vocation?”

“Lucked out. Trust fund. Ready for the dip?”

Cas wasn’t sure he was, but Dean had planted his feet and was bowing, bending Cas backward, and to keep his back from going out he raised one leg, bracing and rubbing it against Dean, their groins close and Dean’s breath warm on his neck, and then he straightened but still felt like the world was upside down.

“Limber.” Dean’s voice was hoarse. “I like that.”

And Cas’ intellect was pleading with him: Think, observe, stay alert.

And he was responding: No. Just once, he was going to lose himself. Just once, there were no mobsters or drug lords or neo-Nazis in the room. Just once, he was going to do what he wanted.

He slipped his hand inside the lapel of Dean’s jacket and pulled as if to bring them closer, which was impossible, and murmured: “Ready for the kiss?”

Dean wasn’t ready for it. He was desperate for it.

Cas pressed his lips to Dean’s and Dean stopped all movement except to clutch Cas’ wrist and back, and lean into the kiss like Cas was his lover who’d been pulled out of a burning building.

“Until that day,  
“Until that day . . . ”

The intensity literally took Cas’ breath away. Dean pulled away as if he were embarrassed and did a few dance steps, half-pulling Cas, who gave a shuddering gasp for air.

And the music ended.

Dean looked Cas in the eyes and smiled, and it struck him again, forcefully, how sad that smile was, but there were sounds, cacophony so unlike their music that both he and Dean looked for it.

They were alone on the dance floor. The young couple had moved to the side and were yelling drunken approval. The older couple were standing to one side also, applauding politely. The two gay women were absolutely cheering, as if the dance had been empowering to them personally. Other people, somewhere in the room, cheered and hooted. Recovering his awareness of the outside world, Cas saw Balthazar standing with another man. The other man was laughing, and Balthazar met Cas’ gaze with an approving smile, raising his glass in a silent toast.

Served him right for being so self-indulgent. He started heading for the sidelines, where he was comfortable, his hand cold when he pulled it from Dean’s. But Dean stood still, with a huge smile and his hands raised, and gave a deep bow like an actor who’d just finished playing Hamlet. Cas had to smile, turned back and applauded Dean himself, just in admiration of his chutzpah, as the DJ began playing Santana’s “Smooth.”

He turned back to the bar, thinking he could use something with a little kick, and met the gaze of Dean’s date, Bella.

She may have been only looking at Dean before, but now she was focused wholly on Cas, with an expression that said she wished she had a dull knife.

He let his face muscles relax, smiled a little, trying to look unthreatening. That was just for the sake of the cover. She knew he was a threat, and there was nothing to be done about it. She mouthed something that looked uncomplimentary and turned her back.

Dean, popping up beside him in that cat-burglar way, said in a low tone, “I better get Bella home. Thanks. You – ” He laid a hand on Cas’ arm, hesitated, pulled it away as if reluctant. “Deanthecarguy at gmail.com. You gonna drop me a line?”

“I will,” Cas said, unsure whether he would or not.

Dean went to Bella. She snapped something at him and, as he extended a pacific hand, slapped it away and began moving toward the door. Looking a little amused, he followed her.

Balthazar came up to him, handing him a Scotch on the rocks. “I knew that swashbuckler was hiding in you, Cas. You see what happens when you take my advice?”

Obviously Balthazar was going to give himself credit for Cas’ sudden social blossoming, and why not. “I didn’t expect it to have such an immediate result.”

“You did outstrip even my expectations. I thought I knew every man that good-looking on the East Coast, but I’ve never seen him before, and you snapped him right up.”

“I wouldn’t call one dance ‘snapping him up.’ And I think his date would object to that characterization.”

“Bella.” Balthazar’s eyebrows were arched. “I do hope she and Dean come again, sometime when you’re here. Though we’d have to watch out for the evening ending in violence.”

He actually sounded like that would be great. “Do you know Bella?”

“Yes, from the old country.” That was what Balthazar called England. “We had a lot in common, wastrel children of movers and shakers. She’s actually made something of herself – although what, I don’t know.”

“What does she do?”

“She works for John Winchester, the arms dealer. Wonderful name for an arms dealer, isn’t it?” 

“Very appropriate,” said Cas, who of course hadn’t even blinked at the name.

“Theoretically he’s very legal – only sells to people we approve of. But a few years ago he stopped doing business with the government, presumably because they got a whiff of some of the groups he was selling to on the side. Nothing they could prove, of course, or Johnny’d be in jail.”

“Do you know him?”

Balthazar shrugged, looking around the room. “I met him. He’s not sociable. He and his family hunker down in their compound, and keep their heads down. He doesn’t trust anyone other than family, word is – but I guess he trusts Bella, because she apparently spends a lot of time at the estate.”

“Well, she’s a beautiful woman.”

“You think so?” Balthazar asked with faint disdain. “I do think she started out as John’s flavor of the month, but she must have impressed him in other ways, because other girls have come and gone, while Bella keeps taking meetings.”

“What does she do for him?”

“I asked her that once. She was vague, something about arranging things. One is not encouraged to ask her what she arranges.” Balthazar laid a hand on his chest, a mock-wounded gesture. “Not even her old friend Balthazar.”

“You have a fascinating social circle.”

“I know,” he said with a beatific smile, and waved at someone across the room.

A friend of Balthazar’s approached and asked Cas to dance. Not wanting to call special attention to himself or Dean, Cas agreed. There was, of course, no kiss this time. The lesbian couple complimented him on his dancing and told him about a Pride float they’d seen one time, same-sex couples ballroom dancing. A timid young woman told Cas how brave she thought he was, and what a good dancer. She patently wanted to dance, so Cas danced with her and thanked her for it, which made her flutter.

His mind was so filled with impressions and emotion by that time that he felt physically exhausted – and it was late. He said goodnight to Balthazar, got his car from the valet, did the usual turns and spotting to make sure he wasn’t being followed, turned around and drove back to the van.

Hozai was in the driver’s seat, reading a book by flashlight. He waved and turned off the flashlight, and said something over his lapel mic to Charlie. The van door clicked, and Castiel climbed in.

Charlie spun on her chair, which was bolted to the van floor, and stared at him. “Wow, Castiel!”

“Did something happen?”

“Don’t give me the lost-lamb look, you know darn well what happened. Who was he?”

“A guy named Dean. He asked me to dance. We got a little carried away.”

“A little? You were great!”

Cas removed the flag-pin microphone and handed it to Charlie, along with the device that was supposed to bug the Del Rio meeting if it had happened. “Balthazar is complimenting himself on turning me into a sensation. I’ll be at the next party.”

“Will he? Dean, I mean?”

“I have no idea.”

“I think it’s great, but be prepared for Naomi to freak out. You know she doesn’t like romantic entanglements that come out of nowhere.”

“This was just a dance. Not a romantic entanglement.”

Her head pulled back on her neck a little and she blinked. Then she simply said, “OK.”

He smiled, left the van, waved to Hozai. Hozai started the van’s engine as Castiel got back in his car with a lot to think about.

First: Now that they could bet on which room would be used if Del Rio met with Marin at Sea Pines, would be they able to plant a mic in advance?

Second: Dean. No, he needed to focus. Second was Del Rio. Would he still be reaching out to Marin? Or would he take tonight’s failure as a sign that he should look elsewhere?

Third: Dean. No, Bella. No, Dean.

He shook his head. Dean and Bella were actually one issue, particularly now that he knew Bella worked for an arms dealer named John Winchester and Dean’s last name was Winchester.

Was there any possibility that they were wrong, and that John Winchester had been Del Rio’s potential partner? It seemed very unlikely, since Del Rio had left the party at about the same time that Dean and Bella arrived. But there had been several minutes when Dean and Bella were nowhere in sight.

Possible that it was the other way around? Winchester was reaching out to Del Rio, sending his “arranger” to a party he may have known Del Rio would be attending? Then they get there just as Del Rio leaves? Maybe that would explain Bella’s stormy behavior.

But no, he was pretty sure that the reason for her behavior had indulged himself on the dance floor at Sea Pines moments before.

His mind wandered, remembering that dance. He forced it back on topic. He was going to have to organize everything, simple facts and complex impressions, for his report.

He sighed. James Bond never had to write reports.

Dean. He was wondering about an odd moment related to Dean, but maybe Balthazar had explained it.

And the odd moment was: “Lucked out. Trust fund.”

Either through his work or in his cover life or just in his normal life, Castiel had met several grown children of wealthy families. They never led with the information that they were trust-fund babies. They always had something they did, some way they identified themselves other than as lucky recipients of another generation’s money. They ran a charity, or they were consultants, or they were investors in restaurants or stage shows. Some of them, of course, did have go-to-the-office jobs, but even the ones whose time was their own never admitted to that.

Possible that Dean loved being bluntly honest, to watch people’s reaction. But the other possibility was that he’d rather say he had a trust fund than account in any other way for his income.

For instance, if he was working for an arms dealer of dubious legality with whom he shared a last name.

He remembered again the pressure of Dean’s hand on his back, the sad smile, the desperation in his kiss. This man needed something. And it was dangerous for a tycoon of anything illegal to be close to someone who was needy.

He didn’t want to think of Dean as a weak link, a pry bar to take down an illegal arms dealer. And it made no sense anyway. The task force was investigating Joe Del Rio, not John Winchester.

He was going to have to do something about this strong sense of longing, about the memory of Dean’s feel and smell, before he’d be able to sleep that night. He was thinking that as he put his key into the front-door lock.

Then everything – Dean, longing, Del Rio – vanished in a flash of adrenaline. His front door was unlocked.

Cas diAngelo lived in an elderly two-story duplex that didn’t have an electronic security system. But it had two heavy-duty deadbolt locks on both the front and back doors, and Castiel always made sure that all four locks were secure before he left. Now one of the front-door locks was secure, but the other had been unlocked.

He was sure that he remembered locking both locks before leaving tonight.

He pulled the gun from the back of his waistband, took off the safety. He paused for a moment, letting his stepped-up breathing give his body all the oxygen it needed. Then he turned the key in the one locked bolt gently with his left hand, pulled it out and put it in his pocket, and swung the door open on well oiled hinges.

No sign of anyone in the rooms immediately around the door. He closed the door very quietly, but didn’t relock it, leaving his options open. There was a lamp glowing in the living room; he couldn’t remember if he’d left it on or not.

Footsteps on the wood floor upstairs, and a shadow at the top of the staircase. Cas raised his gun in a two-handed grip and called clearly, “I’m armed. Identify yourself.”

Just a second’s silence. Then, “Dean Winchester. Don’t shoot. I don’t want to die in this get-up.”

Dumbfounded, Castiel lowered the gun, but kept a firm grip on it as Dean walked down the stairs. His expression mingled embarrassment with peevishness, which struck Castiel as odd; if anyone should be peeved, it was himself.

“What are you doing here?”

“Well,” with an embarrassed smile, “the idea was that when you came home I’d be sitting there – “ he pointed to an easy chair near the liquor cabinet – “saying, ‘Welcome home! Have a drink!’ Then I had to go to the bathroom. Screwed that up.”

“How did you get in?”

“Door was unlocked. You should be – ”

“No. It wasn’t. I remember locking both locks.”

Dean shrugged and took a step toward him. Cas raised the gun again. “Hands up.”

Dean stopped, raised his hands. “OK. I picked the locks.”

“Those locks can’t be picked.”

A chortle leaped from Dean’s throat. “If someone told you that, he sold you a bill of goods.”

“You carry around lockpicks with you?”

“Misspent youth. And you’d be surprised how often they come in handy. Friend locks himself out of his house, things like that.”

“What are you doing here?”

Dean looked at him like that was the dumbest question he could have asked. “It seemed to me like we made a pretty good connection at the party. Thought we might want to see where that could go.”

Castiel examined him with narrowed eyes.

“No,” he said. “You can’t possibly have thought that the best way to begin a relationship was by proving that you could break into my house. Apparently I got home before you could finish stealing whatever you came for.”

Dean started to laugh, tried to choke it back, was trying not to insult the guy with the gun but couldn’t stop himself. “I wasn’t, I promise. Your twenty-dollar Van Gogh prints and nickel-plated tie clips are safe from me.”

“Then why break in?”

Dean sighed. “OK. Here’s where I admit to being paranoid. Can I put my hands down?”

“No.”

Dean gave a slight eyeroll, but kept his hands where they were. “When we were dancing. During the dip? I could tell you were armed.”

And that, Castiel, is why you maintain alertness at all times, even if you don’t think there are any bad guys in the room.

He remembered clearly Dean’s hand moving to his lower back, but his focus had been on other sensations.

“I’m the guy who always figures that if something seems great, there’s a booby-trap somewhere. I decided to look around and see if there were, you know, severed fingers in the refrigerator or a whole wall plastered with newspaper articles, anything like that.”

It was maybe the dumbest thing Castiel had ever heard. You’re afraid someone’s a serial killer, so you break into his house, alone, late at night?

And then it all cleared. Dean was trying to find out if the gun meant that Cas was in law enforcement.

That made sense. A guy with lockpicks and willingness to use them makes a connection with another guy at a party and suspects the other guy’s in law enforcement. Hell, Dean may have thought that Cas was there working an investigation.

And he was, of course. It just had nothing to do with Dean Winchester.

It was worth a sardonic laugh, but he kept his face straight. “How do you know where I live?”

“My dad does some subcontracting for the government. I have access to some databases.”

Not the task force’s database, Cas was sure of that. That would be the database about employees of the Department of Labor. “I’m pretty sure that’s illegal.”

Dean’s face was wide-eyed, penitent. “It probably is. You should probably turn me in.”

He was curious. It was the excuse Castiel would give himself later. Was there actually something crooked about Dean? How crooked? Did it relate to John Winchester?

So instead of kicking Dean out of the house – which was the intelligent play, he knew it was – Cas let out an exasperated sigh and put the gun back under his suit jacket. “Oh, for God’s sake. I almost shot you.”

“Stupid,” Dean said, lowering his hands. “I know it was. And like you say, best way to screw up anything between us.”

“If you’d just asked, I’d have told you that I was mugged once. It was years ago, but – ” in a mock-sentimental tone – “the memory still remains.”

“Oh, man. How bright of me, to make you think that you were being burglarized. Was that here in Washington?”

Gently probing at Cas’ cover. “You’d think so. But no. That was in Boise.”

“Boise? What, you lucked out and got their one mugger?”

“Something like that. I’m going to have a drink. I’d ask, but I assume you already helped yourself.”

“I didn’t. I did look over the cabinet, though. Good stock, but it looks like you never touch it.”

“I don’t get many visitors. Brandy?”

“Sure.”

Cas went to the cabinet, got a couple of glasses, and poured. Dean came over to stand next to him, using his attractiveness to lure Cas into forgiving him and relaxing, and scooped up both glasses, taking them over to the sofa.

With a raised eyebrow, Cas plucked a glass from Dean’s hand and sat in a chair across the coffee table. Dean had asked his questions, now Cas could ask his. And thanks to Dean’s intrusion, he was perfectly justified in asking them. “So what do you do when you’re not breaking into people’s houses?”

“Well, for one thing, I restore old cars. Buy ’em old and beat-up, restore them to beauties.”

“Can you make a profit from that?”

“Most of them I just add to the family collection.”

“Your family has a car collection?”

Dean shrugged. “Big house, big garage. Some people keep horses.”

“I see.” Cas sounded as if he were just learning about the extent of the family’s wealth.

“We have a theater at the house too, we rent first-run movies. You should come by sometime, we could pull up whatever your favorite is.”

Working on cars in the family garage, watching movies in the family theater. Is that isolation by choice, or by family decree? “I really like the ‘Godfather’ movies. Does your collection go back that far?”

Dean smiled and leaned forward as if imparting a secret. “You know, you can get hold of pretty much any movie you want these days,” he said. “Sure, come on over. Those are great flicks.”

But no real personal enthusiasm. Because he’s been there, done that. “Where is this place?”

“Over near Fairfax.”

Cas raised his eyebrows. “You had a long drive to the party.”

“Well, that depends on your attitude toward the speed limit.”

Cas smiled and loosened his tie, saw Dean relax in response. “And the big shots that your girlfriend wanted to talk to were at this particular party, so – ”

He was unnerved at how excited he felt when Dean made a disapproving face at the word “girlfriend.” “Come on, man. It should be pretty obvious that she’s not my girlfriend.”

“Well, you came to the party with her and left with her. I just assumed the dance was – Bisexuality does exist.”

Dean leaned forward. “Believe me, if I could have left with you, I would. But I couldn’t do that to Bella. Just say, ‘Here’s the keys to the car, drive yourself home’? I told her I’d be her escort. You don’t do that to people.”

“M-hm. But you do break into people’s houses?”

Dean sat back again. “Got no excuse for that. You were just – You’re so great. And apparently available. I had to figure there was a catch.”

And, of course, there was.

Cas was suddenly tired. Tired at the end of a long day, tired of pretense, tired of treating Dean like a suspect.

Of course, he acted like a suspect. And maybe there was something crooked about Dean, something crooked about his family, that made him wary of strangers. He might have been approached already by someone in law enforcement, someone low-key and charming, seeking entrée to the Winchester estate.

God, he was tired. And he wanted out of this suit.

“Wouldn’t blame you if you decided I was a creep,” Dean continued. “But if you’re willing to give me a second chance, let me know. Deanthecarguy at gmail dot com.” He grinned roguishly. “Willing to do all kinds of things to atone for my screw-up.”

He put his glass down and stood.

“You don’t have to go.”

It wasn’t impulse or cunning on Cas’ part. It was deliberate. He wanted Dean. And Dean wanted him.

Dean dropped back down again. “Well, in that case, why don’t you come over here and we can continue this discussion on the couch?”

Cas stood, with his glass. “Why don’t we continue this discussion in the bedroom. I believe you know where it is.”

Dean shot to his feet, but his voice was casual. “Yeah, but not everything. Just that there aren’t any shrines to Satan, or anything.”

“Oh good. You missed the hidden panel.”

There actually was a hidden panel.

It was in the floor, in a corner under the 20-year-old beige wall-to-wall carpet in the bedroom. It opened to a niche containing his badge, some cash, additional magazines for his gun, and ID under another name if he needed it in a hurry.

He’d made the documents – driver’s license, birth certificate and one credit card – himself. He did it for the whole task force; the physical documents were his forte. The task force had a small bland office in a small bland office park where the equipment was kept. He didn’t, though, work on the electronic aspects of creating an identity – the driver’s license and birth certificate in the right government databases, the credit card filed with the company, traces of an artificial life in phony websites or on social media. That was Charlie’s expertise, and she was ready to do it any time, day or night, at home or in the office.

Since Dean had come down the steps, Cas had wanted to check that niche. He couldn’t, of course, while Dean was in the house; he had to act as if that corner of his room was as boring as any other corner. He couldn’t even check it after Dean had left, not until he’d swept the house for planted microphones or camera.

And if there were microphones or cameras hidden in the bedroom?

Then Dean was a voyeur, pure and simple, taking advantage of a bedazzled partner. Cas diAngelo was going to enjoy himself completely, and Castiel would be nowhere in sight.

Dean shed the tuxedo fast but Cas beat him, nude and moving his hands down into Dean’s pants even as Dean undid the zipper. He gripped Cas’ shoulder and stood still for a moment, swaying with pleasure.

“Like you,” he said hoarsely. “Knew I would.”

He finished undressing as Cas went into the bathroom and came back out with lube – and condoms. Dean looked a little disappointed, but understood the logic.

“You won’t mind so much,” Cas said, tonguing his way down Dean’s torso, “if every other – skin cell you have – is gorged with sensation.”

Dean laughed breathlessly. “Man, you even talk dirty in a classy way.”

“Have to do something – to make up for my – nickel-plated tie clips.”

“See, you have to understand, I’m a jerk. But you just reminded me – you’re not the one with something to make up for.”

He bracketed Cas’ legs with his own invitingly.


	3. Chapter 3

About four in the morning, Cas got up to go to the bathroom, and pulled on an old flannel bathrobe against the early-October chill. When he got back to the bed Dean was drowsily awake, but his eyes popped wide open at the sight of Cas.

“God, you look so good,” he said.

Cas was amused. “Well, now I know your turn-ons. Thousand-year-old bathrobes and messy hair.”

“You bet. Come here.”

Without untying the belt, Dean ran his hands under the robe, clutching at the soft cloth and Cas’ skin. After a few moments of that Cas’ knees gave way and Dean laughed, wrestling him down onto the bed.

He was still wearing the robe when he woke up. Dean was wearing his tuxedo, frowning as he adjusted the bow tie in the mirror.

Cas watched without stirring, but Dean seemed to realize he’d awakened and turned, holding the brandy he never had finished last night. He walked over to the bed and said with certainty, “We’re going to do this again sometime soon.”

Cas was just beginning to know Dean well enough to realize that Dean meant, “Please tell me we can do this again sometime soon.” Cas stirred a little. “Why not now?”

“Don’t I wish. I have to get back home. Sunday brunch with the family. Attendance mandatory.” He finished the last swallow of brandy. “Grab your phone, I’m gonna give you my number.”

They exchanged phone numbers. Dean said goodbye and headed for the door, leaving Cas feeling somehow incomplete.

“A moment,” he said, got out of bed, and went to Dean. He clutched Dean’s arm and pulled Dean to him, kissing him.

“That was great,” Cas said. “I haven’t felt this good in a long time.”

It was the absolute truth.

“Same here,” Dean said.

After a moment, Cas forced himself to take his hand off Dean’s arm, and Dean left. Cas watched him from the top of the staircase, and Dean paused in the open doorway.

“Be sure you re-lock these,” he said with a smile, and closed the door.

Against anyone not quite as deft with lockpicks, presumably.

Cas relocked the deadbolts, thinking he should get a chain for the door, went upstairs and dropped back into bed.

At some point, he needed to sweep the house for any electronics Dean might have planted. Then he needed to check the niche in the floor for signs of tampering.

But he didn’t want to do that now. Right now he was happier than he’d been in – 

He couldn’t remember feeling happier. He wanted to sustain the feeling.

His phone rang.

It wasn’t the phone that he’d pulled out of his left inside jacket pocket when he’d undressed last night, the one on which he’d recorded Dean’s number. It was the one in his right jacket pocket, the one he’d left in the jacket when he’d hung it on the back of a chair.

He sighed, but got out of bed and answered the phone with a simple, “Yes?”

“How soon can you come into the office?” Naomi’s voice, always crisp, but a little more urgent than usual.

He shrugged off the fact that it was Sunday. He’d always known this wasn’t a nine-to-five job. “About half an hour.”

“Go see Herb first, then come to my office. Thank you,” she said, and disconnected.

“Good morning,” he said to the dead receiver, and put the phone back in his jacket.

Thirty-five minutes later, he was standing in Herb’s office. Herb did analysis of documents, and of electronic chatter and video that was gleaned from dozens of (mostly legal) sources by Charlie. Herb’s analyses were usually spot-on, and when he wasn’t sure he told you exactly what he was unsure about and what his best estimates were. He was very valuable to the task force, which is why they overlooked his being a bit odd.

Today, for example, he was dressed in dark blue pants and a red-green-and-yellow striped shirt with a sweater the color of Dijon mustard buttoned firmly over it. His beard was neatly trimmed, but his hair was unruly. His first words to Castiel explained that last point. “I’ve been here since five analyzing video of the party.”

“Since five?” Castiel said. “They called you in for that? Del Rio’s contact didn’t even show up.”

“Oh, I always come in early. And who cares about Del Rio. I mean, maybe Naomi cares. But this is way more interesting. Come over here.”

Herb led the way into his chaotic office, one wall of which was dominated by a bulletin board covered with photos and lists. That bulletin board had been entirely different the day before; he’d done all this since 5:00. Castiel missed just one step when he saw a picture near the center – a sketch artist’s rendition of Dean, looking like an antisocial brute, but unmistakably the same man. There were more pictures, of Dean and other people, scattered on the desk and visible in a partly opened desk drawer.

“Looks familiar, huh?” Herb said eagerly. “Do you know who that is?”

“Dean Winchester?”

Herb looked equally dismayed at having his surprise spoiled and amazed at Cas’ knowledge of the name. “How did you know?”

“He told me.”

“He told you his real name?”

“I gather that’s unusual.”

“Well, for that family, yeah. You know the background?”

“I don’t.”

Herb smiled at now being able to impart information. He pointed at two sets of cards on the board. A name was on each, and they were grouped into two lines under two different headings, “Men of Letters” and “Hunters.”

“The Men of Letters was a gang, pretty well organized. The name was an inside joke, they started as a forgery and counterfeiting ring in the 1950s, but by the ’80s they were trying to get a cut of the cocaine market like everyone else. The Hunters – kinda the same thing. Originally contract killers, but there’s a lot more jobs and a lot more money in the drug trade. Samuel Campbell was the head of the Hunters, and Henry Winchester was high up in the Men of Letters. Henry’s son John was just middle management at that point.

“By 1982 the competition against each other in Kansas City was intense. When police pulled a body out of the Missouri River they could be pretty sure it was a member of one of those gangs. The gangs were good about protecting the upper echelons, though – nothing was ever proven against Campbell or either Winchester.

“But in the meantime – jumping back to the late ’70s now – do you know what happened?”

Castiel shook his head, and Herb looked pleased. “John Winchester met Mary Campbell, Samuel’s daughter, and they fell in love.”

“How? Gangs like that are usually so close-knit they’re almost incestuous.”

“Good question. No one knows for sure. My theory is, Lawrence. John was lining up dealers in the area at that time, and Mary was a student at the University of Kansas. However it happened, finding out their last names didn’t keep them from getting together.”

“Possibly it added to the excitement of the attraction.”

Herb looked a little surprised. “Well – yes, maybe it did. Anyway, Mary left home, married John. Her father disowned her, the Men of Letters treated John like he’d married a spy, those two didn’t care. They were going to be together no matter what. – Are you still with me?”

Cas raised his head. “Yes. They were determined to be with each other, no matter what.”

“They had two kids, both boys.” He pointed triumphantly at the sketch-artist picture. “The oldest one, Dean Winchester.”

“A child raised in near isolation.”

“Well, after a few years the Men of Letters pretty well accepted Mary. Especially after the second kid was on the way, I think they must’ve realized she was serious about being one of them. They named the second boy Sam – some question about whether that was some kind of sop for Mary’s father or just a name they both liked. If it was meant as an olive branch, it was way too little too late. This was the early ’80s, and the two groups were in murderous competition.

“The Men of Letters had a conclave of their big men from different cities in 1983, and the Hunters lived up to their name. We assume. Again, nothing could be proven. A bomb went off at the meeting, and killed Henry Winchester. But worse than that, it killed – See, Samuel Campbell, he was an old-fashioned type. You sell women, or you marry women and let them take care of the kids. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that John might consider Mary as a valuable advisor.”

Castiel almost never showed emotion, but his eyes widened in shock. “She was at the conclave. He killed his own daughter.”

“That was his worst mistake. His second-worst mistake was, he didn’t kill John Winchester.”

“This is operatic.”

“So far. After this it goes straight to ‘Game of Thrones.’ The only Men of Letters boss who wasn’t disabled or killed in the blast was a guy who’d been cutting out territory in Oklahoma at the time, Bobby Singer. He and John went way back. He was in John’s hospital room within hours, and didn’t leave. He literally lived in that room with John, sleeping in a recliner by John’s bed, taking a five-minute shower once a week. He’d send flunkies down to get food from the hospital cafeteria, pre-packaged stuff. Once John was recovered enough to eat, he tasted John’s food before John took a bite.

“The boys – Sam was a baby at the time, Dean almost five – were packed off to live with Singer’s mother and some Men of Letters soldiers at an undisclosed location. And once John’s arm was working well enough for him to write, they started writing notes to each other, passing a clipboard back and forth. Nurses saw them doing it. Guess how hard law enforcement tried to see those notes.”

“Very hard.”

“And guess how much luck they had.”

“None.”

“Two out of two. Then John was well enough to have visitors, although Bobby still never left the room. More passing a clipboard around, John refusing police protection. Guess the next person who went missing.”

“I would guess – a low-level gunsel who knew where the conclave would be held but whose job was security outside the building, so – supposedly by sheer luck – he wasn’t injured by the bomb. And it later turned out that he had a lot of money in an offshore account.”

“Samuel Campbell’s informant. Darn good, Castiel! But wrong. That was the second guy to go missing. The first was Campbell’s only other child, a son. No body ever found. They didn’t even give Campbell closure.”

Castiel shook his head.

“While John was still in the hospital, solidly alibied, Campbell’s two main associates and their bodyguards were killed in a gunfight. Couple of Letters soldiers vanished about that time, so we assume they were killed too. Then – long pause. Months. John’s back home, but still disabled, getting twenty-four-hour nursing care, when Campbell’s wife is killed.”

“And Campbell himself?”

“A few months later. John was up and moving around by that time. But of course he had an alibi for Campbell’s murder.”

“Of course.”

“And then John reinvents himself. Legitimate businessman. Part-ownership in a Midwestern legal racetrack. Then he got into dealing weapons, small-scale at first, but he was good at it – he and Singer, who’s apparently the only guy in the world Winchester trusts.”

“Not even his own children?”

“Dean maybe. Sam’s estranged. He’s like, a mutant – born with a conscience. That’s all I can figure.”

Cas blinked. “Dean doesn’t have a conscience?”

Herb pointed at him with a broad grin, as if he were about to reveal a secret. But what he said was, “We don’t know! You want to know the sum total of what we know about Dean Winchester?”

“Yes.”

“He was born in January 1979. He attended college for two semesters, dropped out. In 2000 he was a suspect in a truck hijacking – ” he pointed at the sketch-artist drawing – “but the witness recanted. He lives on the family compound with his dad and Singer and a lawyer and household staff and security. He drives a red Mustang. He dates various women, doesn’t seem much interested in any of them. He does seem interested in cars. That’s. It. We weren’t even sure he was gay until last night. We don’t know if he’s involved in WinForce, the family business, or if he just has fun with Dad’s money. If they could pry him open for information about the shadier aspects of Dad’s business, they’d do it in a heartbeat, but there’s no handle. He’s completely elusive. You – ” He pointed at Cas again – “you danced with the Great White Whale of law enforcement!”

He was so earnest that Cas felt obliged to muffle his laugh. “That’s an – interesting metaphor.”

“So. Naomi said when you were up to speed, you should go to her office for further instructions.”

“I’m on my way. Thank you, Herb.”

“Bring us some data!”

Naomi’s office was large and comfortable but without a reception area. If you were on the task force, you didn’t need to sit in a waiting room, and if you weren’t on the task force, you had no business being at her office.

She was on the phone at her desk, but beckoned to Castiel as she said, “We’ll keep you informed. Have a good time at the wedding.” She disconnected as Castiel sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk.

She raised an eyebrow. “Quite an evening.”

“Indeed.”

“Did you know who he was?”

“No. He told me his name while we were dancing, but I didn’t know anything about it.”

“He told you his real name?”

“Herb found that interesting too. Does he usually use aliases?”

“He usually doesn’t show up in situations where a name is required. We’ve run across restaurant reservations after he was spotted there, simply under the name Dean, or occasionally Dean Springfield or Dean Ford. But his father’s only really been under federal investigation for two years – which would normally be enough to pry a crack in the organization, but Winchester’s people are incredibly tight-lipped and disciplined. And, of course, rich. As you know, it’s illegal for American citizens or companies to deal with certain entities, but it can be extraordinarily profitable.

“We can’t find legal cause even to revoke Winchester’s Federal Firearms License. It’s all rumor and odd coincidences, things that benefited Winchester but could have benefited other people too.”

“Herb said we’re not even sure that Dean is involved in John’s business.”

“We’re not. What we’re sure of is that he is absolutely loyal to his father. He won’t be tempted to open up by money or a personal connection – they’ve been tried.”

“Have they been tried on Sam?”

“Sam’s a different story. He broke away from the family about fifteen years ago. John was sending Sam to Princeton when the family moved from the Midwest to the compound in Virginia. After his sophomore year, Sam stopped taking John’s money, moved back to the Midwest, and put himself through college and law school at the University of Kansas. We don’t think there’s any contact with John. Apparently Dean attended Sam’s wedding in 2010, but John didn’t. It’s possible that Sam could be reached, through appeals to his conscience or threats to his job, but we’re sure that any information he might have from his teenage years would be too sparse and too old to be useful.”

“What is his job?” Castiel asked.

“He’s a public defender.”

“Interesting.”

“Low status, low pay.”

“But not just that.” Cas stood and began pacing. “I’m thinking of the vastly different experiences these boys had growing up. Sam probably doesn’t remember his mother, the separation from his father, the terror that both parents might be lost. All he knows from personal experience is growing up in a house full of rage and paranoia and secrets. Oh, John’s probably told him the story, so often that it’s lost its shock value to him. And every time John repeats it, Sam thinks, ‘Not this again.’ He doesn’t understand why they can’t have just a shred of the normalcy, the openness, of the people he knows from school or the people on TV. He probably realized his father was a bad guy when he was in his teens, started supporting himself within a couple of years of legal adulthood. But all the same, he doesn’t become a prosecutor. He becomes a public defender.”

“Because?” Naomi was leaning forward, her beautiful eyes sharply focused.

“He’s not looking to punish evildoers. He’s thinking about how his rich father gets away with major crimes while some schlub who sells weed or fences hot TVs goes to prison. The keynote is empathy, not vengeance.”

Naomi leaned back in her chair again. “And Dean – ”

“Remembers it. Remembers the horror of being told that he’d never see his mother again, being sent away from home into hiding with strangers, seeing his injured debilitated father when they were finally allowed to return. I’m quite sure he remembers the police as frequent visitors, not friendly or comforting to his father, questioning him. In his child’s mind, his family are victims – the police should be helping, not suspecting. He learns quickly that the best way of helping his father – the best way of winning the approval of the only parent he has left – is absolute loyalty and absolute silence. When Sam voices resentment, Dean defends their father, and the more resentful Sam gets, the more defensive Dean gets. But again, not to the point of vengeance. You tell me that Dean attended Sam’s wedding. And apparently Sam didn’t have him ejected.”

“All the same, absolute loyalty and absolute silence have to have its limits. Surely a man in his thirties living in a nearly empty mansion without friends or lovers has a breaking point.”

“You think last night was his breaking point.”

“What did you think?”

Cas stopped pacing, gazing absently at a framed photograph of nighttime Paris on the wall. “He is eager for attention. Affection. He’s in a bind. If attempts to turn him by using a personal connection have failed before, it’s probably because he caught on. So no matter how near a breaking point he is, he has to suspect anyone who seems interested in him. That explains the break-in.”

“What break-in?”

Castiel looked around at Naomi. “He broke into my house last night. I came home from the party and found him there.”

A traffic jam of questions silenced Naomi for a moment. Then she said, “How?”

“He picked the locks on the door.”

“Those locks can’t be picked.”

“I told him that. He laughed. He seems quite familiar with the subject. I wonder if he has other activities besides sitting in a nearly empty mansion.”

She registered that, but kept asking questions. “How did he know where you live?”

“According to him, his father once did some subcontracting for the government and still has access to databases.”

“Hm. He did, back in the early, mid two-thousands. He stopped applying for government contracts, complaining about the red tape. Later, we began suspecting that he’d decided to avoid federal scrutiny as much as possible so he could pursue illegal sources of revenue. If he’s figured out how to retain access to government databases, that’s – Well, he’s committing yet another crime.”

“But we can’t do anything about it.”

“No. Dean would know that the tip-off had come from you. So he used a government database illegally, then did a break-and-enter. What was he after?”

“He searched the house. He told me that it was because he was suspicious about anything good that happens to him, so he was afraid I might be – insane, or a serial murderer, something like that. Even at the time, I suspected that he was actually afraid that I was in law enforcement.”

“Your cover?”

After a moment, Castiel said, “I would say there’s an eighty percent chance of its being uncompromised. There’s only one hidden niche in my home that contains task force-related items, and it looked undisturbed at a cursory glance. I need to take a couple of days, and then do a thorough cleaning, so that I can ‘accidentally’ discover any surveillance devices he may have planted. If there are any, I’ll call the couple from whom I bought the duplex, and tell them that I don’t know if they’ve had problems with a stalker, but I just found something that looks like a bug and they should examine their new home. Then I’ll discard it in the trash. After the trash goes out, I’ll take a closer look at the niche for signs of disturbance.”

She shook her head. “I’m sorry I called you this morning.”

“I very much doubt that there’s anything as elaborate as cell-signal tracking going on. As I say, I think there’s an eighty percent chance that he was simply worried I was with law enforcement, searched my home for evidence of that, and found none.”

“And when you walked in on him?”

“I pretended to believe his serial-murderer explanation. We had a drink and talked for a while. He told me some things about himself that tally with what you say, I’ll put all that in the report. Then we were intimate.”

Again, if only for a moment, Naomi was speechless. “Do you think that was wise?”

Cas looked rueful. “Is wisdom ever the criterion in making that decision?”

She saw his point, though she didn’t like it. “Mm. It should be. The man broke into your house!”

“It’s hard to be too indignant about that when you know that what he suspects about you is absolutely true.”

She sat back a little. She was clearly thinking fast about something.

“Bear in mind,” Castiel said, “I didn’t know that Dean’s father was under federal investigation – or any kind of investigation. Balthazar told me that Dean’s father was a crooked munitions dealer, but that was something he’d heard on the grapevine. I knew very well that John Winchester wasn’t our case.”

“Well,” she said a little grimly, “he is now.”

“How did that happen?” Castiel hoped that his tone didn’t sound as sharp to Naomi as it did to him.

Again, her eyebrows arched a bit. “You’re how that happened. After our contact at the FBI told me why Del Rio’s proposed partner wasn’t at the meeting, I told him I’d share any results of our surveillance. I sent the video over early this morning, not really expecting much – for one thing, it’s early on a Sunday, and for another, the only points of interest are Del Rio arriving and leaving. I thought. But Dean Winchester arrived at about the time that Del Rio left, and suddenly my FBI contact has a whole new focus of attention. He watched, apparently with rapt interest, tried to determine who you were when Dean talked to you at the bar, tried to track where Winchester and his date disappeared to, but couldn’t, so he kept an eye on you, and – you know what he saw.”

Castiel nodded.

“He is – and you don’t say this often about FBI agents – thrilled. You’re the only person they’ve ever found who seems capable of turning Winchester’s head. He asked if I knew who you are. When I told him, he was more thrilled.”

“So you did share that information.”

Naomi smiled a little. “There are times when I keep things from our fellow agencies, but usually I think it benefits us all to be open with each other.”

Castiel nodded again.

“They want us to take over the Dean aspect of the Winchester investigation. More to the point, they want you to take it over. They want it so badly that they’re essentially giving us carte blanche to handle it any way we like, with any assistance from them that we need, as long as we share the resulting information with them.”

“They want me to pursue a relationship with Dean in my capacity as an agent.”

“Yes.”

Cas drew a long breath and sat back, thinking.

“You’ve pretended to be someone’s friend before in your capacity as an agent. But of course, this is – somewhat different.”

“It is.”

After a moment of silence, she asked, “Is it the prostitution aspect that disturbs you? Or the betrayal aspect?”

Cas couldn’t help but smile. “I wish you’d be more plain-spoken, Naomi.”

She smiled a bit in return, waiting.

“If John Winchester had expressed a sexual interest in me, I wouldn’t hesitate. He’s dealing with terrorists, he isn’t being caught by traditional means, we do what we have to do to stop him. But you said yourself that we don’t know about Dean’s involvement with WinForce. He may not be guilty of anything.”

“Then we should find that out, shouldn’t we?”

He nodded.

Then he shrugged and said, “After all, it’s not like we set out to entrap him. This just – happened. We should take advantage of it. And,” he added wryly, “it’s not like you’re asking me to do something I haven’t already done of my own free will.”

“Be very careful. You say yourself,” she echoed the phrase back at him, “that there’s a twenty percent chance he suspects you to the point of electronic surveillance.”

“I’ll find that out in the next few days. But in the meantime, I don’t think I should call Dean.”

“I agree. If he is suspicious, we don’t want you to seem to be pursuing him.”

“I’ll start thinking of ways for us to meet accidentally, if he doesn’t initiate. Maybe Balthazar will have another party next weekend.”

She returned his smile. “Ten days, I think. Give him ten days to contact you. Very casual.”

In fact, the phone in Cas’ left jacket pocket rang three hours after he left the building.

“When I suggested dessert,” Dean said, “this wasn’t what I had in mind.”

“Best pumpkin pie in the D.C. area,” Cas said, cutting into the slice on his plate.

“Blueberry’s good too,” Dean admitted. “But still.”

With a smile, Cas looked around at the other tables in the diner. Even though it was late on a Sunday afternoon, the small diner was busy; the food really was good here.

“How was Sunday brunch with the family?”

“The usual. Good food, sitting around listening to Dad and Uncle Bobby pontificate. Not that they aren’t good at it, and I appreciate the family tradition. But when you’re thinking about something else,” he looked directly at Cas, “it’s hard to stay engaged.”

Castiel gave Dean an appreciative look, but also took a huge bite of pumpkin pie that prevented him from saying anything. He wanted Dean to keep talking.

But what Dean said was, “Any traditions in your family like that – kind of enjoyable, kind of a pain?”

Cas thought fast, dealing with his mouthful of pie. He had a standard answer that could later be tailored as required – an indefinite response about a boring middle-class Midwestern upbringing.

But in a flash, he decided to tell the truth.

He chased his pie with a sip of coffee. “I don’t – really have a family, actually. My birth mother was in prison, last I knew. I have no idea where my father is. I was in the system from the age of eight, in and out of foster homes, kind of depending on the lives of the foster parents. People want to adopt babies, as you probably know, not nine-year-olds.”

Dean shifted his gaze to the side, his jaw tight, shook his head once.

Reading the power of the emotion behind the tiny reaction, Cas said, “It wasn’t gothic, you know. I made some good friends along the way. But, like you, I have a tendency to mistrust situations that seem good. You were wondering why I’m – available, maybe that’s why.”

After a moment, Dean smiled and cast his eyes up to Heaven. “OK, I promise I’ll never bitch about Dad again.”

“Well, but, it’s the inalienable right of family members to bitch about each other, isn’t it?”

Dean chuckled, shifting his attention back to his pie. “Yeah. It’s probably in the Constitution.”

“Are you needed at the house pretty consistently?”

“Which is the polite way of asking why a grown man lives with his dad.”

“No, if you’re attached to your family, I would – I would say that’s great.”

“Yeah, sort of. And – well, to begin with, it’s a huge house. I wasn’t kidding about the car collection and the movie theater. If you don’t feel like seeing someone, you don’t have to. And I help Dad with his business, from time to time.”

There it was. Castiel cut into the crust of his pie as though it were the only thing that interested him at that moment.

“Plus,” Dean picked up his own coffee cup, “I’m just too damn lazy to set up my own place, arrange for housekeeping and pay the bills and all that.”

“I don’t believe that. Personal observation tells me that you have a very high energy level.”

“Well, for some things, yeah.”

Dean took a sip of coffee, sat back a little. “But since you asked – about always needing to be in the house – ”

Cas tilted his head inquisitively.

“I know a great place on Chesapeake Bay. It’s near Hampton, but not in it, so it’s nice and quiet, good beach, hiking trails, things like that. And if you want to go out for some nightlife you can drive on in to Hampton. I was thinking of going there this Friday, just staying there through Monday, a nice long weekend. Want to come along?”

Not wanting to seem over-eager, Castiel looked thoughtful, as if pondering the speed of this relationship.

“You probably have to work.”

“Well, I have a lot of vacation time accrued. The only question is whether – No, you know, I’ve covered for a lot of people over the last year or two. About time they returned the favor. Let me check with the office and get back to you tomorrow, but I’d like to go.”

“I guarantee you’ll have a good time.”

“Why does everything you say sound like a double entendre?”

“I don’t know. You must have a dirty mind.”

And yes, Castiel reported to Naomi later, they were intimate again. Dean exhibited a healthy enjoyment of sex, no sign of any violence or other perversions. Castiel hadn’t further pursued questions about exactly what Dean’s father’s business was or exactly what Dean did to help him. There would be time to explore their biographies, without seeming to push, over a four-day weekend.


	4. Chapter 4

Dean was only a few minutes away from the Winchester estate when his phone rang. He grinned, pulled over to the side of the road, got out his phone. The grin fell off his face.

But he kept any disappointment out of his voice. “Hey, Dad.”

“Where are you?”

“About five minutes away.”

“Come see me in the den when you get back.”

“Will do.”

And mutual disconnection. Dean knew better than to ask any questions over the phone.

It might just be about a job, of course. But he knew all the tones and levels of his father’s voice, and he had the feeling this was about something else.

He shook his head, put the car back in gear.

When you walked into John Winchester’s den, the first things you saw were the big-screen TV, the comfortable blue and green sofa, chairs, and recliner, the mural of a tropical beach painted on the wall behind the pool table. What you would not see were the hidden encrypted computers, heavily secured, which John could wipe clean remotely at a moment’s notice and which were backed up to an offsite location. John had a regular home office, of course; that contained the computers filled with legitimate business.

“Close the door, son. Have a seat.” John was sitting in the recliner, a Scotch on the rocks on the small table to his right.

“Have we got a job?” Dean asked, sitting in a chair across the ebony coffee table.

“No. Well, nothing for you, right now. Bella told me about her birthday present, by the way. Nice work, figuring out the combination. And nice of you to provide your services for free.”

“No problem. It was interesting.”

“Figuring out the combination – that was your intuition again?”

“Well, you have to give the intuition something to work on. I’d done my homework on Balthazar, got Bella to talk to him, looked over the office carefully. You put all those facts in there and let the intuition cook ’em until it comes up with something.”

“I don’t trust intuition,” John said, “not even my own. But yours has come through for us, more than once.”

“Thanks.”

“But intuition about a job and intuition about a person – those are two different things.”

Dean tipped his head back with a resigned look, as if he knew what was coming.

“I understand,” John’s tone was no different from his tone when he was complimenting Dean, “that you made a spectacle of yourself last night.”

“Gee. I wonder where you got that understanding from.”

“You’re not denying it, then.”

“It was a party. I had a good time.”

A revolted look crossed John’s face, and he took a drink to cover it. “With a complete stranger.”

“It was just a dance.”

“That doesn’t explain why your car didn’t get back into the garage until eleven this morning.”

Dean’s gaze hardened, and suddenly his voice sounded like his father’s. “Very soon, Dad, you are going to stop spying on me.”

“It’s not spying. It’s security.”

“It’s spying. And we both know you wouldn’t be as hysterical about it if the complete stranger was a woman.”

“I don’t want to hear – ”

“Then don’t spy on me. You think I’m disgusting, my life is disgusting, then don’t be constantly trying to find out about it. By this time you should know you can trust me. I’ve practically been a damn monk. Meantime, you’re shipping girls in and out of the house – ”

“Watch your mouth, son.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m twelve. What exactly is the difference? I mean, other than the fact that your girls are actually here on the premises, where they can get a real good look at things?”

“The difference is, I vet them carefully, and they never have access to the office or the den.”

“And what? Did you see this guy anywhere near the office or the den? Do you think I didn’t check him out?”

It apparently hadn’t occurred to John. “You did?”

Dean tossed a hand in the air. “Of course I did. He works for OSHA. Before that he was a legislative aide at the State Senate in Idaho. His place is completely appropriate for his income level, not too run-down but not too pricey. His Facebook page is boring, but it exists. His bank statements show a regular balance based on his income. Did you do that much vetting on Sophia?”

“Yes. And this isn’t about me. It isn’t about you either, even if you think it is. It’s about the organization, and the safety of everyone in it.”

“Uh-huh. Which explains why you spy on Bobby’s extracurricular activities.”

“That’s – I keep an eye – ”

“No you don’t, Dad. You think I’m automatically untrustworthy because I’m gay. It’s an attitude – ”

“I don’t want to hear – ”

“— straight out of the 1940s, and you weren’t even born then, for God’s sake!”

“So I’m just supposed to – sit and do nothing – when I hear – when you’re being – with someone who could be anyone – law enforcement, a Hunter – ”

“The Hunters no longer exist. Get that through your head. Campbell’s grandniece and grandnephews decided to revive the old name, to make themselves sound like drug lords. And everyone knows they’re not. Everyone knows they’re half a step up from dealing dime bags on a street corner. They’re halfway across the country. They’re not a threat.”

“Of course they are. You get that through your head, Dean. You see security as just – something that annoys you, but I see danger everywhere. Everywhere. And I’ve got the experience to prove it.”

“I know, Dad, but – ”

“There are no ‘buts.’ You either keep your guard up, all day, every day, or everything you love gets taken from you.”

“Dad, I understand. I do. But somehow, even with security, you manage to have relationships. And it’s ridiculous for you to say that I shouldn’t have them – ”

“I told you, I don’t want to hear – ”

“I know you don’t,” Dean said calmly. “You just want to assume that I’m a promiscuous idiot, and anyone I’ll get involved with is a promiscuous idiot, because that’s your view of gay men, and I’m not going to change it. And I went through too many years of hiding and hating myself for you to change me. I’m not a ten-year-old with no sex life and dependent on you for everything, Dad. I’m a grown man, and I need my own life. I think we need to revisit the idea of me getting my own place.”

John sounded as calm as if he were refusing a second drink. “No.”

“You’d still see me all the time. I mean,” he smiled, “the cars are all here. When you have some work for me, we work together well. I like having dinner with you and Uncle Bobby. But I can’t live here anymore.”

“You’ll be killed.” John’s voice was strained.

“I’ll get a place with plenty of security. And I know how to take care of myself, after all these years. I’ll be fine.”

“You don’t know that. And I do. You’ll be killed. I’ll lose my whole family.”

“There’s still Sam.”

His father gave him a look. “Sam is lost to me. Your mother, my mom and dad. You won’t have any children. You’re the only family I will ever have.”

Dean sighed, dropped back in the chair, shook his head. “You know, I want to tell you to stop being a manipulative jerk. Except I know that’s really how you feel.”

“I feel that way because it’s the truth. There were only two things that kept me alive after your mother and my dad died: Punishing the bastards who killed them, and keeping you and me and Bobby safe from any other bastards who’d do the same thing. The first mission is done. The second one doesn’t end. I’ll be doing it until I die. Don’t throw – Please. Don’t throw away your life. It’s been my life’s work, keeping you safe.”

There was silence.

Then Dean said, “It’s not that I object to living on the estate. I mean – ” He looked around with a flashing smile – “who would? But Dad, the spying has to stop. The – the disgust, at me being what I am, you’ve got to learn that this is your problem to deal with. I won’t endanger myself, and I won’t endanger you, and you should understand that by now. And if you can’t understand it, I will leave. I won’t be treated like I’m either a ten-year-old or a security threat. I deserve better than that from you, and you know it.”

John took another drink. “I’m trying to – understand, son. I am. But when – when I hear about – ”

“Well, to begin with, when you ‘hear about’ things, consider the source. Bella – You know, I give her credit, she’s great with clients, and it’s handy to have someone around who can do the honey-trap thing. But we both know, whatever front she puts on, she is one mean bitch when she isn’t getting what she wants.”

For the first time since Dean had walked in, a faint smile twitched John’s lips. “Well – yes.”

“So.” Dean stood. “I’m gonna raid the fridge and watch some TV in the great room. Want something to eat?”

“No. Thank you.”

“Goodnight, Dad.”

“Goodnight, son.”

Dean closed the den door behind him and stood stock still, shaking his head. Then he headed for the kitchen.

Naomi agreed that, since Castiel and Dean would be very close at unpredictable times, even the flag-pin microphone wasn’t a risk they wanted to take. It was on the question of bugging the resort’s suite that they split. Castiel agreed to listening devices in the front room and kitchen, flatly refused to have them in the bedroom.

“I’m sorry, Castiel,” Naomi said with an edge to her voice. “Did someone put you in charge of this operation?”

“I am effectively in charge of Dean Winchester,” Castiel said levelly. “And I assure you that so far he has said nothing, during or after sexual activity, that could be remotely construed as useful.”

“Post-coital moments frequently –”

“And if he does, I’ll report it. What I will not do is perform intimate acts for a microphone. I’m perfectly capable of playing a man swept away by passion, Naomi, but there are times when you need to have the freedom and spontaneity of privacy. You may have agents who would be able to relax that completely even knowing that they’re being recorded. If you prefer one of them to strike up a relationship with Winchester, I’ll suddenly reconcile with an old boyfriend and bow out.”

“It’s not just the matter of information. It’s the matter of your safety. If he realizes – ”

“ – then he’ll throw me out. Even if he were to attack me, I’ll – ” Castiel smiled a little at the thought – “I’ll run into the living room and yell, ‘Help, he’s trying to kill me!’ Think about it, Naomi. I had to go in to the initiation rite of the White Brethren in Idaho without any surveillance device at all, and that was much more hazardous.”

“Yes, and we were on tenterhooks from the moment you walked in until the moment you walked out.”

“And I emerged unharmed, from a situation that was much more dangerous. As I say, Naomi, if you have an agent who’s enough of an exhibitionist that he can do this, by all means assign him. If you want me to do it, I require privacy.”

She raised her eyebrows. “And if he wants to enjoy himself with you in the living room?”

“I’ll deal with that situation if it arises.”

She gave him a hard look, and he returned it.

Then she said, “You know we can’t assign another agent. Winchester picked you. If you suddenly depart and someone new picks him, he’ll be instantly suspicious.”

“I know.”

She sighed. “All right, Castiel. No eyes or ears in the bedroom. Stay alert. Even when you’re being free and spontaneous. If he brings one of his father’s goons there to try to kill you – even if he doesn’t succeed, I will.”

He chuckled. “Your concern for my safety is touching.”

“Kelvin will be a waiter at the resort’s restaurant.”

“Understood. I’ll express enthusiasm for the food there.”

“Don’t get carried away. There’s not much of anything else nearby, except a few fast-food places.”

“Well, he did say it was quiet.”

“Have a good time.”

“Thank you.”

Castiel stood, started for the door, turned. “In the interest of full disclosure: I’ll be bringing an electronics detection device. I’ll keep it hidden from Dean. If he notices it, I’ll tell him we’ve been issued this because of threats our office has received from a group that resents government regulation of business. Needless to say, if anything is detected, I’ll blame the group and pretend to report it to the office. But the weekend would go so much more smoothly if I didn’t have to play that particular scene.”

He left while she was still struggling for a response.

The resort lived up to Dean’s review – quiet without being dull, luxurious without being flashy. Their suite had an open-plan front room and kitchen where a sliding glass door opened onto a shaded back porch. The porch had a view of the nine-hole golf course and, beyond that, a glimpse of the bay. Cas had an idea of how much it cost per day, and thought that even his idea was probably low.

“OK, last time we have this conversation,” Dean said patiently. He tossed a handful of underwear from his suitcase into a dresser drawer and faced Cas. “Money is – the opposite of a problem. Just don’t think about it.”

“I have to. For one thing, I’m a federal employee.”

“So what? They’re gonna think I’m bribing you to swing some regulation Dad’s way?”

“You have to avoid not just evil but the appearance of evil.”

“And I’m the evil? Well, actually – ” Dean looked like something mildly amused him, then he burst into full-throated laughter. “Tell you what. The day my dad goes to any department of the government to ask for their help or approval with anything, I’ll break up with you. How’s that?”

Cas smiled. “Fair enough. But there’s also the – well, the pride issue, I suppose. I want to at least pay for our meals.”

“OK, OK. And it is way past my usual lunchtime. How about McDonald’s?”

“Give me a break, Dean.”

They spent most of Friday afternoon and evening in bed – in part napping after the long drive. They ate dinner in the resort’s restaurant. The pricing lived up to Cas’ expectations, but so did the look and taste of the food. He spotted Kelvin taking an order at a table across the room, and was sure Kelvin knew he was there, but they didn’t meet each other’s gazes directly.

After dinner the night was a little too cool to sit outside, but they sat in the kitchen looking out at the darkness through the glass sliding door, having a drink. Cas wasn’t pushing Dean to talk about himself too much, but he did want to get Dean talking about something, and hit the jackpot with the simple sentence, “So tell me about these cars of yours.”

Dean was made a happy man. He discussed three cars in detail, including engine work and body work, both of which he’d taught himself with help from his father and the internet. 

“Right now I’m working on an Impala, a ’67. The engine was pretty bad, but the body – I don’t know what some idiot had done, you have work at it to get it that bashed up. The guy I bought it from did some engine work but just gave up on the body. Basically he made it mobile, nothing more. I started ransacking parts dealers and junk dealers all over the country. Got all the parts I needed, in about three different colors.”

“Do you know how to paint cars, too?”

“Oh, yeah,” Dean said casually. “Learned that a few years back, and got a setup installed at the house.”

“With the mask and the paint gun and all?”

“Sure.” Dean laughed. “The first car I ever painted, that Cutlass I was telling you about, I screwed up the paint-hardener mix and the paint got this weird, textured look. They call it ‘orange peel’ because that’s what it looks like. The ironic thing was, I was painting it a burnt orange color, so it would’ve looked – ”

Cas was laughing. “Like a giant orange rolling down the road.”

“Right. Had to power-sand it down to the substrate and start all over. But, learning curve. By the time I got to the Impala, I could do a really good job.”

“What color’s the Impala?”

“Vintage muscle car like that, really only one color fits. Black, high gloss. It’s a thing of beauty.”

“Do you ever drive it?”

“Oh, sure. You have to drive all of them, to keep ’em in shape. For everyday use, though, high-traffic areas, I stick with the Mustang in case someone takes out my bumper. It’s just so much easier to get parts for a modern car.”

Dean gave a decisive nod, looked at Cas’ smile, and smiled himself. “Now could I ramble on about my cars any more than I already have?”

“I’m enjoying it,” Cas said. “It’s always interesting to see what turns people on.”

“Well, speaking of which – ”

“You have a one-track mind.”

He was expecting a grin and a wisecrack, but Dean’s face went a little serious, wistful, looking into Cas’ eyes. “Can’t help it.”

Cas looked back at him.

Then he left his chair, standing over Dean, tipping Dean’s face back and kissing him gently.

Dean gripped his arm, and again Cas had the feeling that Dean was afraid he’d slip away.

And of course, he would. Probably soon.

But not this minute. Not tonight or tomorrow. Some day soon would be hard for both of them. But as long as they were in this moment, the sorrow was still removed, and the promise of tomorrow stretched out to eternity.

Later, when Castiel had made sure that Dean was worn out and sleeping heavily, he searched Dean’s luggage and clothing thoroughly and silently. Hidden in the lining of the suitcase, he found a second phone. 

He poked at it for a while, trying to guess Dean’s password, but was unsuccessful. He put the phone back exactly as he found it, took his task-force phone into the front room, and texted Charlie. 

He’d already given Dean’s number – the one Cas used – to Naomi, who’d given it to Charlie. Charlie was working on getting Dean’s password for that phone, one way or another, from Dean’s phone service.

Castiel texted: “There’s a second option. I’ll work on getting the information to you. Meanwhile, how about the report on the first option?”

He wasn’t surprised to receive a reply a minute later. Charlie slept until noon and worked all night.

And the message was: “It’s on your desk.”

In other words, Charlie had hacked into Dean’s first phone and installed phone cloning software. Any phone call numbers, texts, or emails Dean received would show up on Castiel’s task-force phone.

He had no record of any messages yet, and was a little discouraged. Of course, it might just be that Dean had told everyone that he was on vacation and not to bother him unless it was an emergency. But it could also be that all business-related calls were going to that hidden second phone. He needed either the number or the password for that phone.

He went back to the bedroom, put the task-force phone away, and slid gently back into bed beside Dean.

They ate lunch at the resort’s restaurant on Saturday, and Castiel thought of a question that might reveal something without seeming intrusive. “How do you know about this place?” he asked Dean, before taking a bite of his Caesar salad.

“Well, it’s right in front of you when you drive in,” Dean said, and Cas gave him a wry look. “Oh, the whole resort. I dunno, vacations, that kind of thing. A lot of people recommend it.”

Cas simply nodded, allowing the silence to make its own statement about the inadequacy of the response.

“So how’d you wind up in OSHA?”

Cas took a sip of iced tea. “I majored in political science in college –”

“Worked your way through.”

“Yes, and I was lucky enough to get some scholarships. I realized pretty early on that it was the actual operation of government that interested me, the way things get done, rather than the – flash-bang of elections. Well, that worked pretty well with my major goal at that time, which was to get a job with good benefits. A state senator had an opening for a legislative aide, and I assisted him with different issues, but what really caught me were the issues related to working conditions. There’s tension – and it’s a necessary tension, there really aren’t very many just plain villains out there – there’s tension between the need of business to turn a profit, stay in business, keep employing people and paying taxes, and the need of workers to earn a living wage in healthy, safe working conditions. A lot of times it turns out that what’s good for the workers is also good for the business. Well, anyway. Eventually I began checking into the possibility of working on a national level, with the Department of Labor, and – ” he shrugged – “here I am.”

And that, he thought, taking another drink of tea, is how you answer a question, Dean. Solid, open. Granted, most of it was false, but he was inviting Dean to open up to him as much as he opened up to Dean.

“Was it a big culture shock? Going from Idaho to D.C.?”

“Some culture shock. I’ll tell you, the major shock was traffic. I still, after three years, I still have a hard time believing that there are so many cars and people everywhere, that you have to drive so long before you get to undeveloped land.”

“I bet. That’s one of the advantages – ”

Someone was walking up close behind Cas, and at that moment tension went into Dean’s smile and the corners of his eyes.

“Good to see you, old man!” said the newcomer, in a jovial South African accent. “Been awhile, hasn’t it?”

Cas looked up and around at a good-looking although craggy man of about sixty whose face was creased in a smile that was somehow unconvincing. He was wearing a safari jacket and khaki pants with an open-necked white shirt and a colorful scarf knotted around his neck, a jaunty casual outfit that, Cas estimated, cost about six hundred dollars.

Castiel had been researching John Winchester’s known and suspected associates in the last few days, and recognized the man. Trevor Lash, originally of South Africa but currently from a constantly shifting series of bases, was also an arms dealer. He’d worked as a sort of subcontractor for John in the past, but as his business had grown he’d become as much of a rival as an associate. 

The last the task force knew, Lash had been spotted in one of the unsettled areas of Pakistan run by tribal lords. A vicious conflict between two of them had killed dozens of people in the last couple of years.

“Trevor,” Dean said – and Castiel understood that Dean was signaling it was all right for them to address each other by name. “How are you doing?”

“Very well, thank you. How’s John?”

Not “How are you?”, Castiel noted, as though Dean were simply a conveniently located extension of his father.

“Doin’ good. We had a movie theater installed in the house, that was a freakin’ project.”

“I can well imagine. But I have a hard time imagining him unwinding in a movie theater.”

“Sure, he likes an action flick every once in a while. He tells everyone afterward how many times the characters would all actually be dead in real life.”

Lash gave a laugh that, like his smile, seemed unconvincing. “I can imagine. Is Bella keeping busy?”

“Oh, sure.”

“I understand she’s doing a little subcontinental tourism. Lovely area. If she’d like any ideas on sights to see, I’m very familiar with it.”

“Y’know, I don’t keep track of her schedule.” Dean’s voice was flat, though he was still smiling.

“No, I don’t suppose.” Lash looked down at Cas. “Forgive my manners. I’m Trevor.”

“Forgive my manners” was a subtle rebuke to Dean for not introducing him. He introduced himself. “Cas. I’m pleased to meet you.”

“Are you enjoying the resort? Wonderful place to wine and dine the clientele.”

“He’s not a client of Dad’s,” Dean said. “He’s a friend of mine. We’re on vacation together.”

Castiel maintained an agreeable, slightly puzzled expression on his face, but his mental jaw dropped.

After intensive investigation of every facet of John Winchester’s business and family, U.S. intelligence hadn’t even known for certain that Dean was gay until he’d kissed Cas six days ago. He kept his private life so private that he seemed either a magician or a monk. But with a few words and a deadpan expression, Dean had just outed himself – not to just anyone, to an associate of his father’s. Either investigators had missed all other such moments, or Dean had changed very recently.

Lash’s expression was worth the price of admission. It was like he realized at once that Dean (a) was an individual apart from his father and (b) had a sexual preference that made Lash uncomfortable. A little sound stuttered out of his throat, and then he said, “Oh, well, I’ll leave you to it, then. Lunch, I mean. Good to – Say hello to John for me.”

“I’ll do that.”

Lash looked at Cas, looked away, left.

Dean raised his eyebrows and took a sip of his beer.

“A friend of your father’s?”

“If you have a real loose definition of friendship, yeah.”

“He seemed discomfited at our being together.”

“Surprised me. I wouldn’t’ve thought much could discomfit the guy.”

“What does he do?”

Dean’s gaze shifted, and he took a long drink of beer. 

By the time the beer glass came down, Castiel could tell that Dean had decided against honesty. “Something to do with money, I think. Consulting or managing, one of those vague things. Want some dessert?”

“Your kind of dessert or mine?”

Dean gave him puppy-dog eyes. “Well – I like to think that we enjoy the same kind of dessert.”

Cas smiled. “And you think correctly.” He looked around and caught their waiter’s eye.

Because Naomi was right: In the warmth of post-coital moments, people will often say things they otherwise wouldn’t.

And because Dean was right: They did enjoy the same kind of dessert.


	5. Chapter 5

Cas stretched luxuriously, the soft sheets and Dean’s warm skin sliding against him. Dean was lying on his back, one arm tucked under his head, studying the ceiling.

Cas yawned. “You look serious.”

“I’m thinking.”

“Oh. Well, have fun.”

Castiel rolled over onto his side as if to doze, but remained wide awake.

“The thing is,” Dean said, “Trevor shouldn’t have been here. I’ve never even mentioned this place to Dad or Uncle Bobby or any of their friends. But it’s a public place. My thinking of it as my place doesn’t mean that it is.”

Cas rolled over to face Dean, show he was listening, but didn’t say anything.

“So we’re going to run across these people everywhere, I guess. Anyway, there’s a chance. And eventually you’re going to start wondering who they are and what the hell.”

Another pause.

“See, this has never been a problem before.” He turned his head to give Cas a smile. “It’s actually a compliment to you.”

“You don’t usually care what other people think?”

“They’re not usually around long enough to think anything,” Dean said. “I like the kind of thing where, OK, we had fun for a couple days, have a nice life. I mean, I pick guys who have the same – ”

“Outlook.”

“Right.” He shook his head. “I knew you were gonna be trouble. When we saw each other at that party, I thought, back off, you’re gonna want to find out all about him.”

“And that’s a problem.”

“Well, you ask someone all about himself, eventually he’s gonna expect you to tell him about yourself.”

Castiel was quiet for a moment, pondering how to respond. Then he looked directly at Dean. “Is this about you? Or about your father?”

Dean shook his head, sat up abruptly, swinging his legs out of bed. “This is bullshit. I should either tell you everything or keep my mouth shut. I’m bringing down the whole afternoon and not accomplishing anything.”

“You’re not bringing down anything. I’m interested in anything you have to say.”

“Interested in hitting the pool? Work up an appetite for dinner?”

Cas smiled. “I feel like I’ve had my exercise, but sure.”

He got out of bed and headed for the dresser. Dean was already pulling his own swimsuit out of a drawer.

“If you’re worried about my reaction,” Cas said in a humorous tone, “I’d remind you that the first night we met, you suspected me of being a serial killer. If I can get past that, I can probably get past anything you tell me about yourself.”

Dean nodded. “Well, yeah, but you can’t blame me. I mean, you look so much like a serial killer.”

“I do, don’t I. It’s caused me no end of trouble.”

Swing and a miss. But Dean was getting closer. And once he started telling Cas the things Cas already knew, it would be mere days before he’d start disclosing things Cas didn’t know.

While Dean was in the bathroom, Castiel checked his task-force phone. There was a message for Dean from a blocked number. And it was encrypted.

He shook his head. Encryption programs were damn near impossible. He’d forward it to Charlie, but he knew what she’d say.

Dean would have to decode it to read it, but he probably had the kind of program that destroyed the message as soon as it was read. Which meant that Castiel would have to know exactly the moment that Dean decided to read it and be standing by with his task-force phone at the ready, but unseen by Dean. There were obvious problems.

He put his phone away, tilting his head in puzzlement.

It was a very good bet that the encrypted message was related to WinForce.

So what was the phone hidden in the suitcase for?

Kelvin was their waiter at dinner. Castiel went to the restroom and, on his way back to the table, flagged Kelvin down at a spot where conversations at surrounding tables covered their own talk. He gave Kelvin a fast review of the encounter with Lash.

“I’d assume ‘subcontinental tourism’ means Bella’s in India somewhere, ‘arranging’ something.”

“I’ll pass it along, see if the boss lady can get anything more specific,” Kelvin replied, looking around as if casually.

“Bring us a crème brulee. Thank you very much,” Castiel said with a broad grin, and went back to the table.

“What was that about?” Dean asked as Cas sat back down.

“I told him the check goes only to me, even if you tell him otherwise. And I ordered the crème brulee. I overheard someone say that it’s amazing.”

“Good, sounds good.” Dean sounded abstracted. “Listen. Be OK with you if I have lunch by myself tomorrow?”

“Um – sure.” Then Castiel decided that Cas wouldn’t be such a pushover. “I mean, I guess. Any reason in particular?”

“Just want to get off by myself for a while and think.”

“Well. OK.”

Something was unsettled in him, and he knew exactly what it was. Castiel the agent wanted Dean to feel free to go off by himself – with Kelvin tailing him, of course. They might well learn something interesting.

But Cas, Dean’s lover, was startlingly disquieted.

“This isn’t – ” he looked around at the other tables, lowered his voice. “I can handle it, and I’d rather not be lied to. Is this one of those ‘We had fun for a couple of days, have a nice life’ things?”

“No. God, no. This is a ‘I need to think and I’m not good company when I’m staring at the wall’ thing.”

“Well, yes. I get like that myself sometimes.”

Dean sat back, his eyes moving from side to side, creases at their corners. He was actually thinking about changing his plans. “Y’know, really, I don’t need to –”

“Dean.” Cas smiled. “It’s all right. I’m sorry I – had a moment. We just don’t know each other very well yet. We’ll both take some time to ourselves tomorrow. Where will you be eating, just so I don’t walk in on you accidentally?”

“Not sure. One of the places out by the highway.”

“Then I’ll have lunch here, maybe do a little hiking. We’ll catch up at dinner.”

“Or before,” Dean said.

“Or before.”

The crème brulee actually was amazing. When they got back to their suite, Castiel said casually, as they walked into the living room, “So you’ll go off to think at a fast-food place somewhere, about noon tomorrow, and I’ll eat here and do some hiking.”

“And I’ll find you later,” Dean said. “I’m not blowing you off. I’m just doing my own thing for a couple of hours.”

“Sounds good,” Cas said, turning on the TV.

Even if Kelvin was still at work, Charlie would get the message to him. And Kelvin was very good at surveillance. Dean would never know he was there.

But Kelvin’s expertise turned out to be unnecessary.

A naked, freshly-showered Dean with shaving cream on half of his face flung open the bathroom door abruptly and looked at Cas, who looked a little startled. “Oh good. You’re still here.”

“Uh – yes.”

“Changed my mind. Come with me to lunch.”

“Are you sure you don’t want a couple of hours to yourself?”

“Yes. I’m sure.”

It sounded like Dean was committing to something much more serious than lunch with Cas, but Castiel pretended not to notice. “OK. I’ll just go wait on the patio and read.”

Dean went back into the bathroom to finish shaving, leaving the door open. Cas stepped into the front room, where the microphones were, and called back, “Since you changed your mind and you do want me to have lunch with you, do you want –”

“What?” Dean stepped into the bedroom again, where he could see and hear Cas.

“I said, since we’re eating lunch together after all, do you just want to go down to the restaurant?”

“No, I want to stick with Burger King. If that’s OK. Sometimes you just want fast food.”

“Burger King’s fine,” Cas called, and picked up his magazine as Dean went back into the bathroom.

Dean was both nervous and exhilarated as they drove to the strip of stores and fast-food restaurants along the highway. He was trying not to show it, so Castiel pretended not to notice, but his excitement was obvious. Castiel tried not to speculate, because he wanted his reaction to anything Dean had planned to be as genuine as if he knew almost nothing about Dean.

“OK.” Dean’s gaze swept the dining room as they entered. “Yeah, this looks like a good booth over here.”

He moved at a fast clip as Cas began, “I think someone’s already – ”

He stammered, stopped, and was glad Dean had chosen to surprise him like this. It allowed him to cover the surprise at recognizing someone he shouldn’t recognize.

Because as Dean walked up to the booth, the man already sitting there eating a burger looked around, and Castiel knew the face from his research. It was Dean’s brother, Sam Winchester.

Sam was clearly as surprised as Castiel, and he had no problem showing it. His eyebrows shot up, and he stared at Dean wordlessly. 

“Sam, this is Cas,” Dean said cheerfully, dropping into the booth and sliding over. “Cas, this is my brother Sam.”

Sam glanced at Cas, looked back at Dean.

“I’m – pleased to meet you,” Cas said. “I didn’t know Dean had a brother.”

“Cas, sit down,” Dean said. “Sam, quit looking like that. He’s cool.”

“I’m cool, but you sprang me on him, Dean,” Castiel said. “I think maybe Sam wants to discuss personal matters with his brother. Why don’t I – ”

“Do you?” Dean asked Sam. “I thought we were just catching up.”

“I just – Well, no. It’s fine.” Sam looked back up at Cas, this time with a smile. “I apologize. I was just surprised.”

“Sit down, Cas,” Dean said. “Or better yet, let’s go get our food before we get all involved in talking.”

“Or better still, why don’t I get food for both of us and give you two a moment to talk?”

Needless to say, Castiel wanted to hear every word that Dean and Sam exchanged. But he figured that allowing them a couple of minutes to talk privately might make Sam less wary about him. So he took Dean’s order and got their lunches, including a Coke for Dean and iced tea for himself, and wedged the whole thing into a cardboard holder before he went back to the table. 

“. . .Jess involved in it too,” Sam was saying as he got there.

Dean reached for the tray with a huge smile. “Junk food! Lunch of champions. All right,” as he opened the box holding his burger, “first things first. Proud papa pictures.”

“Why don’t we just talk for a while first?” Sam said quietly.

Dean rolled his eyes. “Sam, I promise. Cas is not going to haul the kids off to an interrogation room.”

“Well,” Cas said thoughtfully, “it depends, of course. If the children own workplaces not in full compliance with OSHA regulations, I would feel compelled to report that.”

Dean laughed as Sam looked blank. “Cas works for the Department of Labor,” he said, before eating a handful of fries.

Sam chuckled, and only then did Cas allow a small smile to replace his deadpan expression. “Oh. No. No, the kids aren’t running sweatshops.”

He pulled a phone from a shirt pocket, played with the screen a bit, and handed it to Dean. “The kids are going to wear out their costumes, it’s still two weeks until Halloween. David’s being Captain America.”

“No he’s not. You replaced David with a tall kid.”

“Amazing, isn’t it? Last year Jess just bought him pants that were too big. He had to wear a belt and his cuffs rolled up, and he complained to high heaven about looking like a doofus, but at least we didn’t have to replace them six months later, they fit him just fine then.” Sam took the phone back, flipped to another picture, handed the phone to Dean. “Kelsey is going as a queen. Not a princess, understand. A queen.”

“Got it. Man, she looks like her mother.” Dean looked up at Sam with a grin. “That’s gonna give you trouble down the line.”

Sam looked pained as he took the phone back. “I’m trying not to think about it until the time comes.”

“Jess is seriously beautiful,” Dean told Cas. “Also smart and funny. Way out of his league.”

“That’s for sure.” Sam handed the phone back to Dean again. “The whole crew.”

A seriously beautiful, laughing blonde woman knelt behind two children with an arm around each of them. The little girl was wrinkling her nose, seemed to be voicing an opinion, while the little boy gave his mom devil horns.

Dean’s expression softened as he looked at the photo. It must be a stab to the heart, Cas thought, to see his brother’s family and to have no part in their lives.

He was feeling a twinge himself.

“Let’s talk about you for a while,” Sam said, putting the phone away and picking up a few of his own fries. “How did you and Cas meet?”

He seemed to realize that they were a couple, Cas thought as Dean launched into a slightly expurgated rendition of Balthazar’s party, and didn’t seem to have a problem with it. That wasn’t the reason for his initial wariness about Cas. No, Cas thought, Sam was edgy about Cas’ presence for the same reason that Dean had initially been suspicious: fear that Cas was an investigative agent trying to use them to get at their father.

And rightly, he reminded himself. If John Winchester was dealing weapons to terrorists and warlords – and Castiel had seen the file a few days ago; the indications were strong – then he deserved to be investigated. If the man didn’t care enough about his own sons to lead an honest life, he was the one making them vulnerable to investigations.

“He calls himself a bureaucrat, but he’s a lot more interesting than that sounds.” Dean was wrapping up the story of their meeting.

“What’s the best part about working at OSHA?” Sam asked.

“Oh, I think – the sense that you’re doing valuable work. Even when people are irritated because they think you’re micromanaging, even when people have no idea what you do. I feel like just the fact that we’re there, doing our jobs day to day – well, sustains the part of the nation we’re responsible for sustaining.”

“That’s a great way of looking at it,” Sam said, and took a drink of soda.

“What do you do, Sam?”

“I’m a public defender.”

“Ah. Is this the part where people usually ask, ‘How can you justify keeping criminals out of jail?’”

Sam laughed quietly. “They usually take longer to get around to it, but yes, that’s the view of a lot of people.”

“What do you tell them?”

“Well – sort of the same thing you just said. I’m sustaining my own little part of the justice system. The state has educated, skilled prosecutors working on its side. For the system to be fair, for there to be no question about whether a conviction and punishment are justified, the accused need to have educated, skilled defenders to make their case.” He gave a wry smile, shook his head. “And these guys, you know, they’re about as far from being Bond villains as you can get. A lot of them are people who just cannot get out of their own way.”

“Sounds like something Cas was saying the other day,” Dean said, and picked up his burger as he continued, “people trash business owners, but there aren’t very many outright villains.”

“But it’s an interesting question,” Castiel said. “When you do run across an outright villain – someone who knows very well that what he’s doing is wrong, that what he’s doing harms people, but he doesn’t care because he profits by it – what do you do then?”

There was absolute silence.

Pretending to be mildly interested in an answer to a rhetorical question, Castiel studied both brothers’ faces. Dean, expressionless, put his burger down as if he’d suddenly lost his appetite. Sam glanced at Dean, down at his own lunch, back up at Cas.

“If he’s profiting, he probably doesn’t need a public defender,” Sam said.

Castiel nodded, but then asked, “Isn’t that something of a dodge?”

A one-sided smile. “Yeah.” He drew in a breath. “And the answer is, I defend him. It’s my job to make his case to the judge or the jury, and force the prosecutors make their case. They have to prove he’s a villain. And they have to prove that villainy is a better explanation than mental illness or some extreme contingency that explains why the guy did what he did.”

“What about you?” Dean’s voice was a little sharp. “What about if there’s a guy employing a lot of people, making stuff people need, but he’s breaking the law?”

Sam gave a contemptuous, one-syllable laugh. Dean kept his gaze fixed on Cas.

“You do run across that,” Cas said. “An employer who provides a large number of jobs in a small town – people will put up with infractions, even dangerous infractions, because they fear losing their jobs. I understand that. We understand that. But if the plant burns down, or explodes, or is sued into nonexistence because it caused a spate of e-coli deaths – those jobs are gone anyway. And people are dead. You can’t take advantage of people’s desperation to break the law. You can’t take advantage of people’s desperation to harm them.”

There was another silence. Castiel waited to see who and what would break it.

And it was Dean, with “He’s usually a pretty fun guy. I swear your grimness is catching, Sam.”

Sam finished off his soda.

Then he asked, “Have you played any golf since you’ve been here? Speaking of fun?”

“Not yet,” Dean said. “Some swimming, some lounging on the patio.”

“It’s a great resort,” Castiel said. “Do you live near here, Sam?”

He didn’t. He lived in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio, and Castiel was curious about what Sam would say.

“Not really. I live in Ohio, but I was going to be in the area, so I called Dean to see if he was planning to hit the resort when I was nearby.”

Sam wasn’t a bad liar, but when someone doesn’t like lying, you can usually spot them at it. Of course there was no other trip; Sam had flown out here specifically to meet with Dean at a place where neither Sam’s employers nor Dean’s father nor federal investigators expected them to be, a place Dean considered his own safe retreat.

One thing Castiel believed, though. They had communicated by phone. That was the reason for Dean’s second phone. They must both have burner phones, maybe even dedicated phones only for calls to each other. However estranged Sam was from his father, that didn’t carry over to Dean. Even if it meant that he had to meet Dean secretly.

No wonder he’d been shocked and displeased when Dean had walked up to him with Cas. And it was an indication, not only of how much Dean trusted Cas, but of how much he wanted to share his life with someone.

Dean began talking about the 1967 Impala he was refurbishing – he was entering into the final stages – and Sam, accusations of grimness notwithstanding, smiled as Dean went into enthusiastic detail. They finished lunch talking about Dean’s cars and Sam’s kids. In the parking lot, they clapped each other on the arm, giving each other an intense look over their smiles, promised to keep in touch.

Neither Dean nor Sam ever directly raised the subject of their father.

Dean was a combination of loving and fierce with Cas that night, gripping him so hard it almost hurt. Castiel wanted to act a little removed, stir Dean up more, maybe get him to talk about what was unnerving him. But Cas simply wanted to give Dean the loving reassurance he obviously craved, and Cas won.

And, as it turned out, that was the best way to get Dean to talk anyway.

“So,” Dean said, lying beside Cas in the dark bedroom, “here’s where I tell you about me. And if you feel like – you can’t be with me after this, because of the job, or whatever, I understand.”

His voice was rough with suppressed emotion.

“I’m listening,” Castiel said.

“Dad supplies large-scale, advanced military equipment to – well, to people who have a need for that stuff. That’s where all the money comes from.”

After a moment, Castiel said, “He’s an arms dealer.”

Dean shifted on the bed. “Yeah. Although, you put it like that, it makes him sound like some kind of TV villain.”

“Well, Dean, it may not be the most exalted job in the world, but it’s perfectly legal. As long as he’s not dealing with, you know, warlords or criminals.”

Silence.

“Is he?”

“I don’t know. I don’t ask.”

Castiel gave the reply a moment to settle. “Because – you already know the answer?”

“I don’t – Look. What would it change? If Dad didn’t do it? Bunch of violent assholes want to blow each other off the map, they’re gonna get the weapons somewhere. Why shouldn’t they get them from Dad’s company?”

“The way you put that, I think maybe you know the answer to that question.”

There was another silence. Then Dean said, in a simple, undramatic tone, “It’s a lousy world, Cas. Not in all ways, but in a lot of ways. My mom and grandpa, Dad’s dad, were killed on the same day by criminals. And it – All he can see is evil. That’s what he thinks the world is. He’s just making money off of the evil shit that will exist anyway, and using it to protect himself. Are you going to look at someone who went through that and tell him he’s wrong?”

“You want to be a support for him.”

“He needs someone to be. Mom’s gone, his parents are gone. Sam – can’t handle it. He wants to live in this nice world of, you know, truth justice and the American way.”

“And you don’t?”

This time, a long silence.

“Sometimes, I think about just disappearing. If I just move out, Dad goes berserk with worry, thinking his enemies will show up at my door. Gotta tell you, the thought occurs to me too. The compound is so well secured, it’s incredible. But if I – ”

A sigh that was almost silent.

“If I just disappeared, if no one knew where I was – well, Dad would freak out, but he’d know that if he couldn’t find me, no one else could either. He wouldn’t be spying on me, having me followed, because of his own fear. And I could live my own life.”

Castiel tilted his head, thinking.

“But that would be the coward’s way out,” Dean said.

“So you’re trapped. By loyalty to – ”

“Family,” Dean said, with that charming smile that only looked sad if it lingered too long. “It all comes down to family.”

Castiel returned the smile. “True. Even when the family isn’t related by blood.”

“You sound like Uncle Bobby. I don’t know, though. You’ve got bonds to people you grow up with that you just don’t have with anyone else.”

Cas started to say something, stopped. Instead, he said, “You have to forge the bonds. Other things take the place of growing up together. Commitment, common purpose. Love.”

“Just – pick out someone to love? And that’s your family?”

“If they’re worthy of love, yes.”

Dean’s head tipped back. It was almost a nod and almost a reaction to an uppercut.

After a moment he said, “Yeah, well. That’s the catch, isn’t it?”

Cas rolled over, put his hand over Dean’s heart, and looked into his eyes. “You are worthy of love.”

“Well,” Dean said, putting his own hand on Cas’ heart. “If you say it, it must be true.”

Castiel didn’t show his reaction to the irony of the statement. He just kissed Dean.

Then he said, “I don’t care about your father, Dean. You’re an honest man leading an honest life, and that’s all that matters to me.”

Dean tensed under Cas’ hand. Castiel let the moment stretch out.

“Am I – wrong about that?” His voice was so quiet, it barely touched the air in little delicate points.

“I told you. I help out at the company sometimes.”

Cas paused as if thinking that over. “Does that have something to do with the fact that you carry lockpicks around?”

Unexpectedly, Dean’s voice was droll. “Maybe.”

Castiel let him worry for a moment.

Then he said, “I still don’t care. You’re a good man at heart. Eventually you’ll do what’s right.”

That was pushing it, for sure. But Dean didn’t seem suspicious, and then Cas began doing things that would distract Dean’s attention from the comment.


	6. Chapter 6

Cas went to the bathroom as they were preparing to leave the resort on Monday, and took the opportunity while he was alone in there to check his task-force phone.

Dean had a message. It was from Bella, and it wasn’t encrypted.

“So glad you and Ginger Rogers enjoyed yourselves while I worked on siting the client’s party, you self-centered bastard. I don’t suppose you’ll deign to help with supplies. At least we know they won’t need candles.”

He raised his eyebrows a bit. Of course the message didn’t seem to give away anything major other than that Bella had arranged something for a client of WinForce; there was nothing illegal stated outright. But if she’d sent any kind of business message without encryption, it seemed that Bella was so enraged she’d either forgotten encryption or she didn’t care.

He forwarded the message to Charlie, finished packing his Dopp kit, and left the bathroom.

Dean looked up and turned off the TV. “Ready to go?”

“I am. Dean, thank you so much. This has been exactly what I needed.”

“Me too.” He stood, pulling his car key out of his pocket, and looked rueful. “But back to real life, huh?”

“Indeed. Back to reality.”

.

.

Castiel’s task force phone buzzed within two minutes after he got home. Either Naomi had estimated very well from his itinerary the exact time he’d be home, or she had surveillance on him. At the moment, he was too tired to care. “Yes?”

“Welcome back,” she said.

“Thank you.”

“We’ve been working on the information you gave Kelvin and Charlie, but when can I expect your full report?”

“Tomorrow. Unless there’s some emergency that means I have to come in now. I’m very tired.”

“Tomorrow will do.”

“All right.”

“Are you feeling well? Your responses are a little – abrupt.”

“As I said, I’m just tired.”

There was a pause, and Cas tilted his head. What did she want?

“Kelvin said the resort is beautiful. ‘Pretty romantic’ is the way he put it.”

“It’s very nice.”

“Is someone with you?”

“No.”

Clearly she was looking for some kind of reassurance that one romantic long weekend with Dean hadn’t estranged Castiel from the task force. He didn’t feel like playing. Either Naomi trusted him or she didn’t.

“I’ll look forward to seeing you tomorrow morning.”

“I’ll give you my report, then go on in to the office. I don’t want Cas to seem like he can stretch out a weekend as long as he wants.”

“I’ve spoken to Eleanor.” That was Cas’ boss at OSHA, the only one in the office who knew who he really was. “If anyone asks, she’s prepared to tell them that you went directly to an inspection site, and will be in later in the afternoon.”

“Very good. Goodnight, Naomi.”

“Goodnight.”

He disconnected, double-checked the door locks, and trudged up the stairs.

He put his suitcase down on the bedroom floor. For a half-minute, he stood just looking down at his double bed.

As planned, Castiel gave a complete oral report to Naomi in the morning. He’d type it up when he got to the office, on a computer that wasn’t networked with the other Department of Labor computers. He went to the office, talked up the resort, closed the door to his own office and began typing.

About 5:00, Naomi called to tell him that Herb had found some interesting information related to the theory that Dean committed thefts for WinForce. She wanted to have a meeting with both of them that evening. Castiel called Dean.

“The first day back was chaos,” he said. “I’m very tired. Is it all right if we don’t get together tonight?”

“Well,” Dean sounded a little reluctant, “yeah. Probably just as well. I’m covered in axle grease right now.”

“Actually, that sounds quite interesting.”

Dean laughed. “See you tomorrow?”

“See you tomorrow.”

“So there was a war between two gangs in Los Angeles in 2001,” Herb said intensely (of course, he was always intense). “Not exactly shocking, but when police tracked down the origins of this one, it turned out that one gang suspected the other of stealing four crates of semiautomatic weapons from them. By the time police realized that and were pursuing the weapons, months had passed, and they were never able to get a line on them. One of them – the serial number hadn’t been removed completely – turned up when Malaysian authorities busted a terrorist group in 2004. We know that John Winchester had contacts in Malaysia, but so do other people, and there was no reason to suspect him specifically. Particularly since he was based in the Midwest at the time, and they didn’t think he had contact with anyone who could pull off that kind of theft.”

Naomi, sitting at her desk, nodded. Castiel, sitting in a chair next to Herb, listened without reaction.

“I’ve been going over records of unsolved munitions-related thefts in the U.S. since 2001,” Herb continued. “Of course, as with the L.A. gangs, there are some we’ll never hear about because the victims aren’t exactly going to call police. But for instance, the theft of several cases of telescopic rifle sights from the manufacturer in 2009. Grenades from an armored truck in 2011. That one, they didn’t even realize the cases were gone until they opened up the truck at the destination. If it was Dean Winchester, being helped by his dad’s goons, he’s really upped his game since that truck hijacking in 2000 where he actually let someone see his face.

“As far as I know, so far Winchester hasn’t had contact with professional thieves. He seems to be pretty much self-taught, but I’m continuing to research that. Whatever else I find, I’ll put it in my report.”

Herb sat back and smiled at Naomi with the look of a puppy who’s just dropped a fetch stick at his master’s feet.

Naomi, who’d been listening with her hands clasped under her chin, parted them gracefully and nodded. “Fascinating. Very good work on such short notice, Herb. Please do continue your research and let me know the result.”

Herb nodded, looked at Castiel, and said, “Let me know anything else you find.” He bounced up from his chair and left.

Naomi focused on Castiel. “So. A week ago you were unsure about this assignment, because we didn’t know whether Dean was even involved in his father’s business.”

“And since then he’s not only admitted that he understands his father’s business is partly illegal, but he’s essentially admitted to breaking the law to help him.”

“I wonder what he’s doing these days. Surely WinForce is wealthy enough now that John doesn’t have to risk his son for a few cases of guns or grenades.”

“Experimental items, maybe. Prototypes. Rare items that can’t simply be purchased.”

“I’d like to know that very much,” Naomi said. “The best way to turn him would be to charge him with a theft that would carry a severe sentence.”

Castiel looked dubious. “I don’t think a threat to him is the way to go about it. I’m pretty sure that, right now, Dean would go to prison before he’d turn on his father, however long the sentence. I think a slow approach to his conscience might pay off.”

“That would be slow, if he doesn’t have a conscience.”

“I think he does. The problem is that his sense of right and wrong is tangled with what is good and bad for his father, his family. If he were led to focus on the fact that his father hurts innocent people – ”

“But he knows that. It hasn’t turned him yet.”

“I think every cell of his brain is devoted to not knowing it, and I think John helps with that. As I told you, he said he doesn’t ask who his father’s clients are, and I believe that. I think John tells him, ‘There’s a shipment of grenades I want, figure out how to get it,’ and Dean does. He delivers the merchandise to the place he’s told, and John ships it from there to the client. He sees his father as a victim, you see, lashing out at an evil world that has caused him enormous pain. I think he can be led to see that John’s victimhood doesn’t give him the right to victimize others.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Well, we’ll try it your way. I hope you’re right. Are you seeing him tonight?”

“No. But probably tomorrow.”

“Don’t make yourself too available. I don’t want him to take you for granted.”

Cas smiled, a little. “There’s no fear of that. He’s avoided love relationships so far because he’s certain they’ll end badly. This may be the way he salves his conscience about helping his father – he sacrifices intimacy. He won’t take for granted anyone who – anyone who offers him love.”

Naomi caught the catch in his voice, and looked at him sharply. “How personally involved are you?”

Castiel was silent for a moment.

Then, “Not overly. I admit to liking him. I respect the care he has for his whole family, Sam and John both.”

“Well, don’t forget that you have people relying on you here.”

“I don’t.”

“See if you can get us the number of the burner phone Dean’s using to contact Sam.”

“I’m working on that.”

“Anything else to report?”

“It’s all in there,” and he pointed to the thumb drive holding his written report that he’d put on her desk earlier.

“All right, then. Get some rest, Castiel. Take care of yourself.”

“You as well, Naomi.” He smiled at her, stood, and left.

The alarm was silent, but it brought guards from all over the research facility. There was a part of the facility that was a large, well secured laboratory, but the alarm had been set off in the part that looked like a small, well secured warehouse.

Outside the door, a guard with two bullet wounds in his chest lay on the ground. The door had been torched, then a small but powerful charge set off inside of it.

No suspects were in sight.

The inside of the storehouse looked untouched at first glance. The first concerns of guards and police were clearing the area and trying to get help for the wounded guard. But when one of the directors of the lab was allowed in, he knew immediately what was missing: A white, dense container for hazardous material, the size of a small cooler, that held two canisters of liquid.

That was very early on Wednesday. By mid-afternoon Wednesday, the task force was sitting around a table in their highly secured conference room, except for Naomi, who was standing next to a PowerPoint image projected on the wall.

“By now you’ve all done at least some work on the investigation of John and Dean Winchester and WinForce. This – ” She pointed at the image on the wall – “is a text message that was sent by Bella Talbot, an aide of John Winchester, to Dean Winchester day before yesterday. I called this meeting because something happened last night that puts an alarming interpretation on this message.”

She angled her stance a bit to read the first sentence aloud. “‘So glad you and Ginger Rogers enjoyed yourselves while I worked on siting the client’s party, you self-centered bastard.’ Ginger Rogers, of course, would be Castiel, who danced with Dean at a party Saturday before last. She had gone to the party with Dean, and when he and Castiel were affectionate, she evidenced jealous rage. Is that the way you’d put it, Castiel?”

“I don’t know about rage,” Castiel said carefully, “but certainly anger. Her facial expression and body language weren’t subtle.”

“The only reason it’s important is that it explains why she was reckless enough to send the message unencrypted. It’s the only electronic WinForce communication that we’ve been able to intercept and make sense of. But the important part of that sentence is the second part. ‘While I worked on siting the client’s party.’”

“I wouldn’t want to be at a party thrown by a client of WinForce,” Kelvin said.

“Exactly. We know that Bella arranges events for John, presumably events at which munitions are either demonstrated, bought, or used. The time period she’s talking about, when Dean was enjoying himself, was this past weekend. So where was Bella over the weekend?

“Again, we have Castiel to thank for the answer. He heard an associate of John’s saying that Bella was doing ‘subcontinental tourism’ last week. Kelvin passed that along, and I notified our federal friends that John Winchester’s aide might be staging an event on the Indian subcontinent. That’s a lot of territory, of course, but we know one thing from the days when John was a federal subcontractor. He has connections in Punjab; we suspect now, among the Punjab mafia.

“Even that is very vague, of course, but the FBI did manage to catch up with Talbot at Indira Gandhi Airport in Delhi, boarding a plane for D.C. The airport is one of the busiest in the world, and they couldn’t get a line on who had brought her to the airport or even what kind of transportation she’d used.

“So Talbot was in India, finding an appropriate site for a WinForce client to do something. That brings us to the second sentence.” She pointed again briefly. “‘I don’t suppose you’ll deign to help with supplies.’ Castiel, would you discuss Dean Winchester’s role at WinForce?”

“He carries lockpicks, and is skilled at using them.” Castiel looked rueful as he continued, “I know that from personal experience the night that he broke into my home, which supposedly couldn’t be broken into.”

“Why?” Charlie asked sharply, then looked a little abashed at herself.

“It was the first night we met, and I think he was looking for evidence that might indicate I was law enforcement of some kind. We know that agents have tried the honey-trap approach to him before, and he’s very suspicious.”

“But now he’s not?” Hozai asked, sounding doubtful.

Castiel tilted his head. “He is always suspicious, to some degree. He expects good things to end badly. But I went over the apartment thoroughly last week, and there was no major disturbance, no surveillance devices. I think he opened file drawers and dresser drawers to see if he could find a badge or a – CIA paycheck stub, something like that. In any case, he trusts me enough that he told me something valuable on Saturday. He suspects that his father’s business is at least partly illegal, and he assists with that business sometimes.”

“He said something about the lockpicks?” Naomi prompted Castiel.

“I did. I asked him, ‘Does this have something to do with your carrying lockpicks?’ and he said, ‘Maybe.’ He said it like he was amused.”

“With that information, I asked Herb to research unsolved thefts of munitions and munitions-related items,” Naomi said. “Herb, would you give us a precis?”

A precis wasn’t Herb’s strong point, but he managed to keep himself to a few enthusiastic minutes giving them the information that he’d already given Cas and Naomi, as well as a few more recent cases. He wound up with, “Now, are all of these Dean Winchester? Probably not. But when you coordinate the little we know about John’s clientele with the items that were stolen, it’s my analysis that at least four of them are. At least four. He’s very good – in and out, slick as a whistle, no evidence.”

“Thank you, Herb,” Naomi said hastily as he stopped to breathe. “Our information, then, indicates that when Bella demands Dean’s help with ‘supplies,’ she’s asking him to steal something needed for the client’s ‘party.’”

She turned to Castiel. “Were you with Dean last night?”

“No.”

She nodded, looking grim. “Well, there was a robbery last night. Someone broke into a storehouse at Potomac Research Laboratories, killed a guard, blew a door, and stole only one thing. That item is weapons-related. I’ve asked Hozai to gather information about that.” She gave a brief smile, beckoned Hozai, and sat down. “I’ll be hearing most of this for the first time myself.”

Hozai stood and fiddled with the laptop giving the PowerPoint presentation. Cas took the opportunity to try to relax his tense muscles. At the words “killed a guard,” he felt like he’d been impaled.

The picture Hozai pulled up was a cutaway diagram showing the inside of what looked like a bomb containing a couple of short canisters with inverted funnels on top.

“This is a corrosion device,” Hozai said. “It’s engineered for two purposes. First, it explodes like a normal explosive device. But it’s also engineered to send a liquid reactant from canisters into the air.

“This reactant is interesting stuff. It’s relatively stable in the canister, and it has a pretty dense consistency. But the instant it’s exposed to oxygen, it loses all that density. It expands to many times its previous size, becoming a liquid rain of flaming acid.”

Charlie sucked in a short breath. Hozai looked over at her and nodded. “Yeah. The purpose of the bomb – well, it’s twofold. It’ll kill you with the explosion like any other bomb. But it also projects the reactant up and out. In the instant that the reactant is traveling, it expands outward, becoming acidic and incendiary. Then it falls on whatever’s left during the explosion.

“It’s not a weapon for warfare. The reactant is very hard to make, so it’s very expensive. You can get weapons that will do the same thing on the battlefield for a lot less. And of course the advantage of the corrosion device is that it removes forensic evidence from the scene, and in warfare you don’t care if anyone knows that you killed your enemy. You want them to know that you killed the enemy.

“Best use for the corrosion device is relatively small-scale criminal activity. It can be used to clean up forensic evidence after a crime’s been committed. We only know of two cases where it’s been used for assassination, but it was very effective both times. A prince of Lajira set it off in a room full of relatives he found annoying, which is why he’s the king of Lajira now. Since the king’s an autocrat, there wasn’t much investigation done. But we have stories of the family members trying to call dead cell phones and waiting to see who did and didn’t come home when they heard the news. It was the only way of knowing who was dead.

“We got a close-up look at the bomb’s effects three years ago. You remember the Mafia conclave in Colorado that was wiped out by a bomb?” Everyone at the table nodded. “The feds put a clamp on the information, because they’re trying to keep people from knowing about the device’s existence, but that was no ordinary bomb, it was a corrosion device. They told everyone that the bodies were so destroyed in the explosion that identification was impossible, but it wasn’t the explosion that did that. It was the acid incendiary. They found bones in the – sludge of the room, but couldn’t get any usable DNA. As in Lajira, they figured out who was gone by whose cars were outside and who didn’t go home to their families.

“The bomb itself is more complicated than an average explosive device, but it’s not too hard for a good bomb-maker. The reactant is the difficult, tricky, expensive part. That’s what was stolen last night.”

He sat down in absolute silence.

“Question?” Herb said.

“Yes?” Hozai looked over at him.

“Do we have details on the robbery?”

Hozai looked over at Naomi, and she said, “You probably read a more recent report than I did.”

Hozai said to Herb, “It’s so recent that they’re still getting details, but what we have so far is that someone got onto the grounds and cut the storeroom’s alarm system. They then cut a slot in the security door of the storeroom, placed a small explosive charge inside, and blew the door. So far so good. But apparently they didn’t know about a second alarm inside the building. That one’s silent. They must have gone straight to the reactant and got it, so they knew what they were looking for. It seems like they were outside the building, carrying the reactant, when the first guard arrived on the scene. According to what the first guard said before he died, he ordered the perp to put the container on the ground slowly, which he did, then grabbed a gun from an ankle holster. The guard – just didn’t react fast enough. By the time the other guards got there, the first guard was dying and the perpetrator was gone.”

Herb shook his head. “It’s just – ”

“Is there anything illogical there?” Naomi asked.

“Not illogical. Up to a point, it sounds like Dean. I mean, exactly like Dean – it’s the blueprint of an unsolved robbery three years ago that I thought he might have done. Being unaware of the second alarm inside is a little sloppy, but anyone can have an off day.

“But killing the guard is a real outlier. There’s never violence in what I’m calling a Winchester job. Once, tranquilizer darts were used. The dosage was very carefully calculated to put a small human to sleep for a minimum of time. One of the guards in that case was a big heavy guy, the dart didn’t even put him to sleep. It made him so groggy that the thief was able to take his gun and his radio and take off with the goods, but neither of the guards was in danger of being killed by an overdose. Even in that botched hijacking in 2000, nothing violent happened to the witness who saw Dean’s face, either at the time or afterward. The witness recanted his identification, but we think that’s because he was bought off. Hard to ask him, since the witness is living in Fiji now.

“I just – This doesn’t sound like Winchester to me. Someone else who works for John maybe, who has access to the methods and equipment Dean used in the prototype robbery, but who’s more likely to lose his cool and shoot somebody.”

“Castiel?”

Naomi’s tone was a little sharp. Perhaps she’d noticed that his gaze was fixed in the middle of the table as Herb talked. He looked up at her, and she said, “Do you have any thoughts about what Herb said?”

“I – would agree,” Cas said slowly. “Dean insists that the munitions his father sells are just used by violent men to kill other violent men. He clearly dislikes the idea of harm coming to innocent people, although he seems to enjoy the idea of taking risks himself. I can see him trying to disarm the guard and escape. Simply gunning someone down seems out of character.”

“Of course, we never really know what someone will do in a moment of panic urgency,” Naomi said.

“True.”

“Do we have any evidence that Dean committed the robbery? Other than Bella asking him for supplies?” Charlie asked. “I mean, that could be anything.”

“Well, not anything,” Castiel said. “Naomi was just making the point the other day that John has enough money to buy normal battlefield munitions. We think he’s using Dean for special projects – rare items that for some reason he or his company can’t just buy.”

“Exactly like the kind of theft that took place last night,” Naomi said, standing again. “I did check into other munitions thefts in the days since Bella sent her text, both here and in India. They have all been small-scale and amateurish. It may or may not be Dean who took the reactant, but it seems more than likely that the reactant has gone to WinForce. That brings us to the last sentence of the text, and the reason why this emergency meeting was called.”

“‘At least we know they won’t need candles’?” Charlie read aloud.

Naomi nodded. “If our conclusions are correct, and I think they are, a client of John Winchester’s in Punjab is planning to set off a corrosion device at a time when there are a lot of candles on display.”

“Diwali,” Castiel said, sitting up straighter. “The Festival of Lights.”

“Exactly. It’s celebrated all over India, but particularly in the north, where Punjab is. It’s a religious festival, but it has a lot of secular aspects as well. Imagine a cross between Christmas Eve and after-Thanksgiving sales that lasts for five days. Families traveling to visit relatives, a day devoted to brothers celebrating their sisters, sales in every store as business owners close their books for the year. And public festivals everywhere – along riverbanks, in parks, in restaurants, all lit by candles in honor of the goddess Lakshmi. A massive celebration all over one of the most populous countries of the world, and sometime, somewhere in there, someone is planning to set off a corrosion device.”

“If it’s the Punjab mafia, they wouldn’t be doing it for terrorism,” Kelvin said. “One of the mobs getting rid of a roomful of its rivals, maybe, like in Colorado.”

“Setting it off at a bank or currency-exchange place, maybe,” Hozai said. “Lots of money changing hands at times like that. A little flaming acid to destroy a vault door.”

“Extortion?” Charlie suggested. “‘You know what we have, pay us or we’ll use it?’”

“It could be any of those things,” Naomi said. “It could be something else. We have only a slight idea of where to begin looking. We have, of course, shared this information with Indian law enforcement, and they are conducting their own investigation, but we are both under a terrible deadline.”

“When does it start?” Charlie asked.

“The twenty-fifth. Nine days.”

Another silence.

Then Kelvin said, “And the plan is – ”

“I’m going to assume that nothing miraculous will happen in the next nine days, using conventional methods, to forward the investigation.”

Nods around the table. “We’ll take more unconventional routes,” Naomi said. “Kelvin, Hozai. Bella Talbot has a townhouse in Georgetown. It’s well secured, but not as much as the compound.” She picked up a piece of paper from the stack in front of her and handed it to Kelvin. “There’s the address. I want you to begin surveillance with the goal of getting in tonight or tomorrow. You’ll look for any piece of information you can find about what’s happening during Diwali. The time and place would obviously be ideal, but we’ll take anything – the name of John’s clients or their location, what transport Bella took from Indira Gandhi to meet with the clients, anything related to India.”

Kelvin just nodded, looking at the address, then glanced at Hozai. The two of them stood and left as Naomi addressed Charlie. “The FBI has tried to get into WinForce electronically. They couldn’t do it, but they were hobbled by the need for search warrants, and more importantly, they didn’t have you. That being said, a caveat: I don’t want you to kill yourself over this. Eat. Sleep. Those are directions. But when you’re not doing those things – ”

“Get into WinForce,” Charlie said, leaping up. “Got it.”

As she bounded out of the room, Naomi shifted her gaze to Herb. “Look at the people who work most closely with John, Dean, Bobby Singer, and Bella – the four who will know what’s happening in Punjab. Look for secrets of the people who work with those four. We want to know something so damaging that they’ll be willing to trade one secret – the time and place of Punjab – in exchange for John never knowing their own secret.”

“I already have a couple of names in mind,” Herb said, stood and left.

Naomi looked at Castiel, who was the only one left, and Cas said, “Work on Dean.”

“Is there any chance that you could get him to turn on John?”

“Reverse his lifetime loyalty to his father in eight days?” Castiel actually pondered it, but not for long. “I don’t see how.”

“Threaten to sever the relationship? Say – you know someone in the government with access to John’s file, you saw it, you’re appalled and you can’t be with Dean unless Dean does the right thing by John’s victims.”

“The problem is that I’ve been playing a long game. I told Dean that I don’t care what his father does, or even about any thefts he himself committed, because I know he’s a good man at heart and will do the right thing eventually.”

Naomi gave a contemptuous “Hmp.” Cas just looked at her for a moment, straight-faced, before continuing. “If suddenly I care so desperately that I’m willing to break up with Dean unless he flips, it’ll give the game away. Best case scenario, Dean will just break up with me and figure that he dodged a bullet. Worst case scenario, he informs John, and John realizes we’re after him.”

“Oh no. Worst case scenario, Dean kills you. We know now he’s capable of that.”

Cas shook his head. “I still don’t believe that.”

“You don’t believe it, or you don’t want to believe it?”

“I don’t believe it. I think it would take something much worse than suspecting me to turn Dean into a killer.”

“Worse than an existential threat to his father and his whole way of life?”

After a moment, “Point taken.”

Naomi sat down again. “I think what’s needed is some good old-fashioned espionage. Can you get into the compound?”

“Yes. Dean’s invited me to watch a movie in the family’s theater a couple of times.”

“Freedom of movement?”

“None, the first time. Possibly a trip to the bathroom, but from the way Dean talks about the place, my guess is that cameras record which rooms people go into. I’d need to get in, observe security, determine the best way to circumvent it, and then go back in again.”

“Within a week.”

“It – could be done.”

Naomi nodded. “Do it.”


	7. Chapter 7

There were cameras at the entrance to the estate. Castiel saw the keypad code that Dean punched in to make the barred metal gate slide open, and memorized it. There were cameras in the garage, along with something Castiel recognized as a motion sensor. There was a camera in the elevator that Cas and Dean rode up one floor; he’d spotted a door, but there was nothing to indicate whether it was a stairwell door or went into a room. 

The elevator opened onto a hallway with deep soft carpeting figured in burgundy, cream and dark green. The walls were dark wood paneling, bare except for decorative scrollwork along the top and baseboards.

“Dean, this is magnificent,” Cas said, looking up at one of the brass-and-glass light fixtures.

“Not a bad little place,” Dean said cheerfully. “Like I say, one of the advantages is that, if you feel like some privacy, there are plenty of places to get it.”

Maybe in terms of actually meeting people. But as Castiel looked up admiringly at the top of the walls, he saw the tiny light of a camera in among the scrollwork.

They turned left and went down a hallway that was the same, except that the carpeting was solid dark green. They passed four doors in this hallway. The doors were closed, and Dean made no reference to them. Castiel was keeping a mental chart of the bits of the house he’d seen: where the garage entrance was in relation to the front of the house, where they were now in relation to the garage.

This hallway ended in a flight of four steps going down to another dark wood door. But this door featured a reel of film unspooling in glittering brass curls. Dean opened the door and beckoned Cas in with a smile.

At first glance it looked like a small, oddly luxurious art gallery. Two rows of deeply cushioned armchairs with cup holders faced a rectangular artwork, abstract swirls of bright color that stretched almost the width of the room. Large, equally colorful posters of vintage racing cars lined the side walls. On either side, between two of the posters, was a sculpture consisting of a low box, about a foot wide, from which a gently curved screen of metal mesh rose five feet in the air. A stark black tower of electronics marked “Marantz” in the back of the room contrasted with a brilliant red old-fashioned popcorn machine and what looked like a full bar, more gleaming brass and glass.

Cas turned, taking it all in, and Dean watched him with a grin. Cas was startled for a moment at the obviousness of the electronic lens staring through a window set high in the back wall, and then he realized. “Projection system. Nice.”

“The picture quality is amazing,” Dean said.

“I assume that’s the screen.” Cas pointed to the abstract art.

Dean pulled his phone and worked with it a moment, and the artwork rose, vanishing into the walls, to reveal a crisp grayish-white screen.

“You operate the screen from your phone?”

“You can operate the whole thing from your phone – start and pause the movie, volume changes, whatever. That’s if you want to. Dad and Bobby aren’t that excited about that aspect. They just throw in a DVD, grab the wrong remote, call me up and ask which the hell remote they use, and play it that way. Guess where the speakers are.”

“Behind the posters?”

“Guess again.”

Cas pointed at the two tall narrow mesh screens. “Those?”

“Yup. MartinLogan electrostatic speakers, invented by a couple of guys out of Lawrence, Kansas.”

“Kansas? Really?”

“Uh – pretty condescending tone for a guy from freaking Idaho.” 

“Is the popcorn machine functional?”

“Of course it is!”

Cas smiled. “You talk about how you father put in a movie theater, but I get the feeling that it’s at least as much your project as his.”

“Well – he had the original idea, but yeah, I kind of took it over. Want some popcorn before we start the movie?”

“I do, and I also want to hit the head.”

Dean pointed to the door from which they’d entered. “Out the door, to the right, first door on the right.”

“Back in a moment.”

With the rapid, certain movement of a guy who’s sure he’s right, Cas turned right in the hall, went to the second door on the right, and tried it.

It was locked.

He turned, putting a puzzled look on his face for the benefit of the camera. But he didn’t think he’d better try any other doors. He went back to the first door on the right, opened it to reveal a spacious lavatory decorated in black, white, and sea green, said, “Ah,” and went in.

It was sparkling clean. He’d seen the size of the compound as they were coming in, and it must require a large staff to keep the premises maintained and the occupants fed. He wondered what attempts had been made to approach the staff.

He washed his hands, discarded the paper guest towel, and opened the door.

It swung within three inches of a tall, broad-shouldered man with a rugged face and grizzled black hair.

“Oh, sorry!” Cas said. “Didn’t realize you were there.”

“You lost?” the man inquired in a bass voice.

“No, just using the facilities.”

“Maybe I can walk you back where you came from.”

Cas pointed down the steps. “Right there. Thank the Lord for that movie reel on the door. All the doors and halls look the same around here, have you noticed? They ought to put up signposts.”

“It’s a big place,” the man said. “Probably not a good idea to go wandering around by yourself.”

“I should get an escort to the john?” Cas laughed, then said ruefully, “Maybe I should. Have a good night.”

He went at a deliberate pace down the steps to the theater door, knowing that John Winchester’s eyes were on his back every moment.

No question, his attempt to enter the wrong door had been observed. And whether Winchester had been in the security room at the time or had been notified by a watchman, he’d been at the restroom door within three minutes.

Of course he’d known that a camera would observe his apparent blunder. He hadn’t known whether anyone would actually be observing it, or whether they’d be suspicious once he “found” the bathroom door.

But of course he should have realized that John Winchester, like Dean, was suspicious of everyone at first sight. The difference would be in reaction if they felt their suspicions were confirmed. Dean would disappear. John, he felt sure after a thirty-second encounter, would strike.

He was startled at how unnerved he was. He took a leveling breath and went back into the theater.

Cas flew tourist class with Naomi, but she was happy because the cost of their tickets hadn’t come out of the task force’s budget. True to their word, the FBI was providing the task force with all resources necessary. And they were asking no questions about details of the task force’s investigation, simply accepting such information as Naomi gave them.

Once they got to the Franklin County Sheriff’s Department, Cas sat in an office watching a monitor connected to a hidden camera in another office. Naomi was in the office with the camera, and rose graciously as a sheriff’s deputy ushered in Sam Winchester.

“Mr. Winchester, thank you so much for coming,” she said, extending her hand. “I realize you must be very busy.”

Sam shook her hand, but at the same time gave her a look of piercing directness. “I was told that there’s no emergency with my family and that I’m not under arrest, but that I was needed immediately. If there’s a change in that, you need to inform me now.”

“There’s no change, and I apologize for the rush. That was my fault. I came in on a plane this morning and I’m scheduled to fly back out in a few hours. The Sheriff’s office is being very helpful.”

She sat down, but Sam remained standing. “A plane from where?”

“Washington, D.C. I’m with U.S. intelligence.”

Sam sounded like he’d expected that. “This is about my dad.”

“Yes.”

He sighed a little, looking around the office as if he knew a camera would be there. Then he sat down too.

“Neither of us has time to waste, so I’ll be direct. You’ve made it clear in the past that you will not help law enforcement in investigations of your father.”

“Untrue. I’ve made it clear in the past that I can’t help law enforcement in investigations of my father. I haven’t had any contact with Dad in sixteen years, exactly for that reason. I never wanted to make the choice between hurting my dad and obstructing justice.”

Naomi sat back a little. “That’s the whole of it? You don’t have any moral objections to what he does?”

“Weapons dealing is a legal trade.”

“Sam.”

Her tone was at once reproving and sympathetic, and Sam’s gaze drifted away from her.

“I suspected,” he said softly. “I always had the feeling, growing up, that there was something – hidden, something wrong, about Dad’s business. For a while I literally wondered if he was in the Mafia, which shows you how definite my suspicions, the cause of my suspicions, was. A wisecrack someone made, Dad’s reaction to something, his contempt for law enforcement – just little things, but – It was a year-long process, from the time I first started seriously wondering about Dad, to the time that I realized that – Well, that he was a bad guy. Do you know the kind of shock that is?”

“Not personally. I can only imagine.”

Sam looked at her for a moment more. His gaze drifted away again.

Then he said, “I do have good memories, you know.”

He straightened and looked back at her again. “That’s the situation. I’m afraid you flew out here for nothing.”

“Let me tell you about a problem we’re faced with,” Naomi said.

She told him about Punjab, about the corrosion device, about Diwali. She left out Bella’s text message and their suspicions of Dean’s involvement, partly to protect Castiel and partly because she and Cas were sure that appearing to threaten Dean with a murder charge would shut Sam down completely. She simply said that an agent of his father’s had made contact with clients in Punjab and another agent had stolen the reactant and murdered a guard, and that “chatter” had tied the two events to each other and to Diwali. Sam listened gravely, unmoving.

Then he said, “God, I hope you’re wrong.”

“We’re not. We’re trying every way we can to stop this, but Diwali begins in one week, and we could run out of time.”

“I just don’t know anything. I know – I know his connections in Punjab go back about thirty years. You know how I know that much? I remember Dad talking about Punjab when I was about six or seven, and I thought it was a funny word. That’s the most I have.”

“Well, it’s something. I don’t think we’ve been looking back that far.” She leaned forward and clasped her hands on her lap. “Is there any way, any way at all, that you could persuade Dean to help us in this matter?”

“I don’t have contact with Dean either.”

“That’s not true.” She was calm. “He came to your wedding. And you were seen together at a fast-food restaurant two years ago.”

That was sheer bluff. She certainly didn’t want to implicate Castiel by talking about Sam’s and Dean’s last meeting, so, she told Castiel, she figured that if they’d met at a fast-food restaurant last week, they’d done it before.

And Sam bought it. After a moment, he shrugged. “Occasionally we get together. I tell him about my kids, he tells me about his cars. We don’t talk about Dad, it’s the surest way to a fight. And we absolutely never talk about Dad’s business.”

“But you know how to get in touch with him. You could reach out to him, ask for his help. Isn’t there a chance that Dean cares about the lives of innocent families enjoying a religious celebration?”

Sam thought for a long moment. He looked a Naomi with narrowed eyes, obviously trying to determine whether she was really concerned or just looking for a way to eavesdrop on any call he might make.

“The way that Dean and I get in touch is complicated,” he said. “It takes some time. Sometimes Dean doesn’t respond. Sometimes he does, but it takes a while. I’ll try.”

“That’s all I’m asking.”

“What would you want?”

“Day, time and place, of course. If he doesn’t know that, the general area. The name of the client. Where is the bomb now – still in the country, or on its way to India? Anything he could give us.”

“He may not know anything. The chatter might be wrong, Dad might have nothing to do with the bomb. And even if he does, Dad doesn’t share a lot of information. I’m not sure he even tells Uncle Bobby, Bobby Singer, everything.”

He sighed, looked her in the eye, and repeated, “I’ll try.”

“‘Complicated,’” Naomi huffed as Castiel steered their rental car back toward the airport. “A five-minute call from one burner phone to another. We should have brought cell-signal equipment.”

Cas shook his head. “His law-school transcripts and legal record are both impressive, and he grew up in a home filled with secrets and worries about security.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning he’s smart, and he’ll be aware of ways a call can be tracked. Besides, we know where Dean is. What we’d need would be a recording of the call, and that would be even more difficult.”

She shook her head.

“We’ll get there. We’ll get there in time.”

“I hope so. Herb has come up with some secrets of Winchester associates, but he himself says that none of them is serious enough to make anyone flip on John Winchester. Charlie is doing her best, but WinForce’s cyber system is a labyrinth of firewalls. If we had even two weeks I’d be as confident as you, but we have half that. And I’m concerned – ”

She hesitated, and he said, “About the target?”

“About you.”

He looked at her, looked back at the road. “Why?”

She was choosing her words carefully. “It seems to me that – you care for Dean, personally. It would be hard for any agent not to – have feelings, in these circumstances. And I don’t see how any of this turns out well for Dean.”

His jaw tightened, and he shook his head. Then he spoke carefully, too. “I don’t know how many ways I can tell you that I’m not emotionally involved with Dean. I like him, as I probably would if we weren’t sexually involved. But he’s admitted himself that he assists his father in a business that provides killing machines to criminals. The fact that he mentally blocks out the deaths of innocent people doesn’t change his culpability. I’ve always known this wouldn’t turn out well for Dean. The best way that this ends for him is that he avoids all charges by flipping on John, and he sees his father only in prison for the rest of his life – provided John will even see him after that. And, like everyone else who’s dealt with Dean, I don’t believe he’ll do that. I believe he’d go to prison himself rather than put John there.”

“And now he’s facing a murder charge.”

“They won’t be able to make that case.”

“Why? Because Dean’s a master criminal?”

“Because he didn’t kill that guard.”

She was silent for a moment. “But if he did, and faced a life sentence for that – ”

Cas thought she was going to finish the sentence, but she was leaving it for him. He obliged. “It would be justice, and he would realize that, but it would be torture for him.”

She nodded. They didn’t say much the rest of the way to the airport.

They returned the car, and Castiel began walking down the concrete ramp that led to the airline terminal. Naomi, though, struck off across the car rental parking lot. When she pulled her phone from her purse, he realized that she was moving to a spot where there weren’t any other people around to make a call.

“Do we have a time yet?” she asked without preface. “Good. She’s already on the string, we’ll set the appointment for then. An additional chore. I need you to bring me two or three functional items from the collection. Make sure there are fingerprints. Dust them, and if there are no prints, wipe them clean and put them back. If there are prints, bring them in and we’ll deal with the powder then. – I realize she’ll notice. What do you think the odds are that she’ll call the police? – Exactly. – Yes, but hopefully you’ll find information about the plot. That’s the reason you’ll be there in the first place. So, with any luck, she’ll find out that we’re on to her anyway within a day or two. – Please do. Thank you.”

She put the phone back in her purse. Cas tilted his head. “You’re having Kelvin and Hozai steal guns from Talbot’s townhouse when they search it?”

“Yes.” 

“Why, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“I don’t mind, but the idea is in the formative stages. I just thought we might want a gun of Bella’s, and better to take it now than try to get back in again.”

“When are they going in?”

“Tomorrow. Herb has already made contact with Bella online, offering her something she could hardly resist – a Browning Automatic Rifle that was used in the final gun battle against Bonnie and Clyde. She seems eager to meet, so he’ll make the date for tomorrow night, dinner at a restaurant twenty minutes from her place.”

“From what I read in her file, Talbot’s an expert on weaponry.”

“So will Herb be, by tomorrow night. He spent all day yesterday and today reading up on different kinds of weapons and munitions records of the 1920s and ’30s.”

Castiel smiled. “By tomorrow night, he’ll know enough to talk to an expert for three hours.”

“At least. If there’s anything at all hidden in her apartment about Punjab, Kelvin and Hozai will have plenty of opportunity to find it.”

“I hope there is something.”

Naomi sighed a little, looking at Cas for a moment with melancholy. “I hope so too.”

At one-thirty in the morning, he understood.

He’d just been drifting off to sleep when it hit him, and his eyes flew open, staring at the dark ceiling of his bedroom.

He lay still for a minute, thinking, trying to persuade himself that he was wrong.

But he knew he wasn’t.

He sat up, turned on the bedside light, thought for a moment more.

He picked up his phone from the nightstand, pressed Dean’s number, and held his breath.

Dean’s voice was sleepy but not cross. “What is this, a booty call? Not that I object.”

Cas began breathing again. “No, just wanted to hear your voice.”

“You sap.”

“Thank you. Are we still on for tomorrow?”

“Of course we are. Your place or mine?”

“I was thinking about your current car.”

“You were?” Dean sounded amused. “One in the morning, you were thinking about my Impala?”

“Among other things. I was wondering if we could go driving tomorrow night.”

“Well – ” Dean’s voice trailed off. “Actually, yeah, why not? I wasn’t planning to finish it for a couple more days, but if I put in a full day tomorrow, yeah, she’d be ready to go.”

“I don’t want to interfere with any other plans.”

“No other plans. I was thinking I’d get some new shoes and stuff, but I can do that anytime.”

Castiel smiled, knowing that, even on the phone, people can hear a smile in your voice. “For some reason, I’ve been thinking about you and that car all day. I appreciate your putting in the effort.”

“No effort, it’s fun. Maybe we’ll find a quiet place and christen it.”

“Absolutely we’ll do that.”

“Great,” Dean said. “Now you’ve got me goin’, I’ll never get back to sleep.”

“Sorry not sorry.”

“Pick you up at seven.”

“I look forward to it.”

They disconnected.

Cas sat holding the phone, staring at the wall, for another five minutes.

Then he lay back down, although he knew he wouldn’t sleep.

He was waiting for Naomi when she arrived at her office at 6:30 a.m. She was, logically, startled. “Castiel? Is there a problem?”

“There’s an emergency. We need to talk, this minute.”

She raised her eyebrows, unlocked her office door, and let him in. He didn’t help her off with her coat, as he normally would have, but she didn’t seem to notice, dropping it quickly on a chair and beckoning Cas to sit in the chair facing her desk as she sat down behind it and stashed her purse underneath. “What’s the emergency?”

He hadn’t sat when she beckoned. He spoke quietly, but his deep voice had a snap. “Your ‘formative’ plan to prevent the bombing isn’t in formation at all. It’s well developed. You’re going to kill Dean and frame Bella Talbot. It’s the only thing that would make someone turn on John Winchester. You’ll offer to make the murder charge go away if she gives you information about Punjab, and I assume other things.”

She looked as if she were going to ridicule him, but he went ahead. “She’s the perfect target. She knows about the bombing, she helped select the site for it. She knows about Dean’s previous burglaries, it’s very possible that she passed the plans for a previous one to someone else at WinForce who stole the reactant and killed the guard. She was visibly angry when he danced with me at the party, and you have tape of that. You have the angry text message that she sent him. Of course you wouldn’t want my face or the text in open court, but you’re not planning to use them in court. You’re planning to kill Dean with one of her own guns, with her fingerprints on it, lay out all of that evidence, and tell her there’s only one way to escape a life sentence. That’s why you made a point yesterday of warning me that things might not go well for Dean, as though things have gone well for any of my other targets in the past.”

She was still trying to look as though he was saying something unbelievable. “Castiel – ”

“And you trust me so little,” each word was a hammer blow, “that you were planning to do this without telling me or letting me have any part in it.”

The expression on her face changed sharply, and she sat back. Then she said, “Would you actually – want to have any part in it?”

“So that is the plan.”

“Just a contingency. If we get too close to Diwali and none of our other methods – ”

“And you were going to protect me from it, as though I were a twelve-year-old. Or hide it from me, as though I were a security threat.”

“I wasn’t – ”

“When have I been that weak? When have I been that untrustworthy?”

“Never, Castiel. You haven’t been.”

“Then what exactly were you thinking?”

She cast a glance from side to side, looking a little helpless. “I don’t understand this rage. Even if I’d told you, why would you want to have a part in this?”

“I can’t believe that I have to explain this.” He sat down, looking her in the eye. “This is my responsibility. I’m the one who brought Winchester to everyone’s attention, I’m the one who brought him into this investigation. This is my case. And it’s my responsibility. Did you really think I’d be happy to bring Dean up to a point where he has to be killed, and then walk away from the consequences? Step aside daintily, saying, ‘Oh well, there’s no blood on my hands’? Is that the contribution you think I make to this team?”

“No.”

“Do you want Dean to suffer?”

“What?”

“Is that part of the frame, that he was in pain or terrified before his death?”

“No. I just want – ”

“He trusts me. I can offer to give him a shoulder rub. Bullet to the base of the brain. He’ll never even know what happened. And it will be an additional point against Bella – that he knew whoever shot him well enough to let them close to and in back of him.”

“I suppose.”

“I assume you were planning to set up an alibi for me, in any case.”

“Of course.”

“Then let me take the responsibility for my own actions. Don’t treat me like I’m an infant.”

There was silence for several moments.

Then she admitted, “It would be helpful if you were involved.”

“Why, thank you,” he said bitterly.

“As I say, it’s simply a contingency plan. A desperate one. Only if everything else fails. You have to consider it as trading one life for several others, perhaps many others.”

“Of course I understand that.”

“And – I know you don’t believe that Winchester killed that guard, but I believe he did. Once we reach the end, I think he’d be facing a murder charge.”

“I think he’d be facing one whether he killed the guard or not. Given the circumstances, ‘Killing people isn’t what I do’ is a weak defense. And even if he skated on that, his father will be in prison for probably the rest of his life. Dean has devoted his own life to John. It will be shattering for him.”

“Exactly. If we can’t stop the bombing through our own efforts, there are two options. We continue the investigation for several weeks after the bombing, get the evidence against John we need only after there’s been a mass killing in Punjab, and then John and Dean both go to prison. Or we put an end to Dean, use that to turn Bella, stop the bombing, and justice is still done as far as John going to prison. I think there’s no question which is the better option.”

Cas nodded. “When?”

“I want to give our people every chance to stop the bombing. But we’ll need at least three days after the shooting to make sure the police have all the evidence they need, to arrest Bella, and then for us to convince her to turn. Even that is cutting it very fine, but I don’t want to rush to the contingency plan.” She thought for a moment. “Monday.”

He nodded. “I’m going to increase my affectionate behavior toward Dean until then. With luck we’ll cross paths with Bella, and she’ll put on another jealous display. Can I do that without your thinking that I’ve become a fifteen-year-old girl?”

“Yes. You should understand, Castiel, I never mistrusted you. I just – I wanted to – ”

“Protect me,” he said dourly.

“I understand how insulting that might seem.”

“Will you keep me in the loop on all future cases?”

She smiled a little. “Well, it didn’t help me much to try to keep you out on this one, did it? Yes. I will.”

“Thank you,” he said in a pacific tone, and stood. “We’ll hope the plan isn’t necessary.”

“Indeed,” she responded.

“I’m getting together with Dean tonight. Maybe I can suggest that he sneak me into the compound, because I think his father doesn’t like me. That may give me more freedom of movement to investigate.”

“I thought you said there were cameras everywhere.”

“There were everywhere that I saw. Dean may know of ways to move around without being observed.”

“Report to me tomorrow.”

“Of course.”

He stopped by Herb’s office before he left; Herb wasn’t there. He was late to work, but Eleanor seemed to understand by his demeanor that, whatever job the task force had him doing, it had taken a grave turn. He left work early too, but a lot of people do that on Friday afternoon.

But he was waiting in front of his duplex with a smile on his face when Dean pulled up at 7:00 in a gleaming black barracuda of a car. He barely let Dean get the car braked before he jumped into the front seat. “You were right. This is a thing of beauty.”

“Yes, she is.” For some reason Dean’s tone was a little flat, though he looked pleased at the compliment.

“Shall we go for a drive and then get a late dinner?”

“Sure. Good idea, actually, I’m not that hungry.”

Cas tilted his head. “Are you all right?”

Dean flashed him the charming grin. “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be?”

When Castiel reported to Naomi on Saturday, she told him simply that Kelvin and Hozai hadn’t been able to find information about Punjab in Bella’s townhouse, but they’d successfully brought in “the other items.”

“I’m sure that Sam called Dean and told him about Punjab,” Castiel told her. “His affect was somewhat flat last night. I tried to probe gently, but didn’t want to insist.”

“No,” she replied. “If you start suggesting that he’d feel better if he made a clean breast of things, so soon after Sam called, he could very well put the two events together and vanish into the compound. We’d lose access to him, and he might talk to John, which would endanger Charlie’s work.”

“That was my thought. Sometimes just letting a person think about these things for a few days is the best thing to do.”

“I agree.”

Neither of them said that Dean didn’t have a few days.


	8. Chapter 8

Cas cooked lunch for himself and Dean that day, and they ate in Cas’ dining room, talking about what movies were in town.

“I really enjoyed watching the movie in your theater the other night.”

“Yeah. Great set-up.” Dean still sounded as if something were bothering him.

“The problem is – when I bumped into your dad in the hall, and later when you introduced me to him, I got the distinct feeling that he dislikes me.”

“It’s not you. It’s my being gay. It upsets – Well, let’s face it, he hates it. I’ve never been able to tell him anything about – anyone. Sometimes – Well, never mind.”

After a moment Cas said, “This sounds, well, juvenile, but also fun. Could you sneak me in there without his knowing?”

A pause.

Then, “Actually not a bad idea. And hey, I’m juvenile. Not for a few days, though. I have a stupid project to do for Dad.”

“A ‘stupid’ project?”

“Yeah, it’s – ” Dean waved a hand in annoyance. “There were these people, back in Kansas City, real sons of bitches. They’re all gone now, but there’s a couple of grandnephews and a grandniece back in the Midwest. They didn’t have anything to do with the sons of bitches, they’re about my age. They got in touch with Dad recently, want to make peace or something. I think they’re hoping Dad will line them up with some work. I think Dad’s OK with it on general principles, but – you know, he’s security-conscious. Extremely security-conscious. And he’s having me treat the whole thing like it’s a meeting between Israelis and Palestinians. He wants me to rent a place, quiet location, preferably some woods or a body of water on at least one side, all kinds of specs. I finally found it today, rented it online. I went out and took a look at it, and it fits all Dad’s requirements, but it’s a pit. Something the online people didn’t bother mentioning.”

“Of course not.”

“So I’m going to be spending the next couple days cleaning it up, replacing the doorbell that doesn’t work, and stocking the place with supplies. There’s not even any toilet paper there.”

“What fun. Want some help?”

“No. I’ll tell you, I’m in one of those moods lately. Probably better if I have a couple days to myself.”

“All right. Do you know these people?”

“No.”

“Well, you said you rented the place. If they arrive drunk or rowdy or something, are you on the hook for any damage they do?”

“Oh. No. I rented it, but I used the company credit card. WinForce could buy and sell the place a hundred – Actually, I’m wondering if Dad might want to do that. Once he gets a look at the place. It is kind of secluded, but just a few blocks away from a subdivision with good streets. Cover in the woods, but close to public areas, best of both worlds.”

“He could use it for the company’s more private business.”

Dean flashed a quick grin. “Yeah, exactly.”

They made time for some afternoon lovemaking before Dean had to go about his business. Cas telephoned Naomi and told her about the meeting.

“It sounds to me like it’s relatives of Samuel Campbell, wanting to set up a meet with John Winchester. I think there are some family members, but they only rated one mention in the file, so I’m not sure of names or where they come from.”

“Do you think John’s planning to kill them?”

“With him, who knows. The meeting isn’t what I’m focused on anyway. It’s the house. It sounds like the perfect place for the contingency plan.”

“You think so?”

“I assume you don’t want him killed at my place. For us to crack the compound’s security enough to get me in there, commit a murder, and get back out unnoticed, it would require more time than we have. Anyplace public won’t work. I thought about suggesting that we check into a motel, but it’s been very clear that Dean has rejected Bella in the past – the plan depends on that – so it would be very unlikely that they were in a motel room when she shot him. But the place for this meeting was rented with a WinForce credit card, and John asked Dean to do that. Whether Bella knows about the meeting location or not, it will be clear that she would’ve had the opportunity to know about it. And the place isn’t associated with me at all.”

“You’re right. That sounds good.” There was silence on her end for a moment, and then she said, “I called the others today and told them about the contingency plan.”

“All right.”

“Kelvin offered to carry it out. I told him that you consider this a duty, and he said he understood, but wanted me to pass along the offer.”

“It’s good of him, but I do consider it a duty.”

“I would like him to be with you Monday if the plan does go into effect. Just in case anything unexpected happens.”

“All right, I’ll coordinate with him. How did Charlie take it?”

“She’s very upset, blaming herself. She thinks that if she’d been able to crack WinForce’s electronics, the contingency plan wouldn’t be necessary. And she’s right, of course, but it’s ridiculous for her to feel like this is her failure. The FBI tried for two years and couldn’t do it. Of course they were held up by having to constantly find probable cause for search warrants. But even given our greater – discretion, there would have been no way for Charlie to do this before Diwali begins. She came in immediately and started to work, and I told her to go ahead, but she’s to leave no later than 3 a.m. and come in no earlier than ten tomorrow.”

“I think I’ll go by and see her tomorrow morning,” Cas said. “I think that, like you, she may be worrying about my feelings. If I tell her about my approach to this matter, maybe it’ll help her.”

“Maybe. Thank you.”

“I’ll call Dean tonight and ask him for the location of the place, offer to bring him lunch or take him out for a break tomorrow.”

“Let us know when you find out.”

“I’ll do that. Goodnight, Naomi.”

“Goodnight.”

Later, he ordered a carry-out dinner that came in a large white paper bag. When he got home that night, he put the bag in the refrigerator.

At 8:00 Sunday morning, Cas knocked on the door of Charlie’s apartment. For a moment he wondered if he should use the bell to waken her. But there was movement at the peephole, and when she flung the door open, his question was answered. Her already thin face was drawn, her eyelids red, and she looked like she hadn’t slept at all.

“Oh, Castiel!” she said, and threw her arms around him. He put his arms around her, smoothing her back.

“This is wrong,” she whispered brokenly. “It’s just wrong. I’m going to get into WinForce. I am. There’s got to be some way – ”

He murmured in her ear. She pulled her head back, startled, and even though there were tears in her eyes she smiled as if he’d said something silly. “Of course,” she started to say, then her face cleared as she interrupted herself.

Then she said, “Come in,” and triple-locked the door once he was inside.

Dean was occupied during the day Sunday, but phoned Cas in the early evening with a suggestion that Cas come over and they could go to dinner someplace close by – “Refrigerator doesn’t even work in this damn place.” He told Cas the house’s location. At Naomi’s suggestion, Cas went to Charlie’s office, where she was working with concentration, and picked up a microphone.

He told Naomi what he’d found about the relatives. Christian, Gwen, and Mark Campbell were the grandchildren of Samuel Campbell’s brother, raised in the Twin Cities area. Each of them had a record of petty crime: possession of four pills of non-prescribed opioids and receiving stolen property for Christian, drunk and disorderly and receiving stolen property for Mark, prostitution and shoplifting for Gwen.

“They’re certainly never going to become masters of the underworld by themselves,” Cas said. “It’s obvious why they’d want to make a connection with John Winchester. It’s not obvious at all why he’d respond.”

“When will they be coming in?”

“I’m not sure. Several days, at least. Dean told me he’d be working on the house for that long.”

“Good,” Naomi said. “If it happens, I don’t want there to be any other possible suspects. I want a straight line from the crime scene to Bella Talbot.”

“By ‘If it happens,’ you mean when I kill Dean,” Cas said.

Naomi blinked. “Well, yes.”

“We have to acknowledge what we’re doing. We have to be willing to state that we’re going to take a life, in order to save other lives. We can’t allow ourselves to be mealy-mouthed about our intent. If it’s the only way to save people’s lives,” Cas spread his hands, “so be it.”

“We may make a breakthrough in the next twenty-four hours,” Naomi said. “It may not be necessary.”

There was no hope in her voice.

The house was indeed a pit, albeit a pit someone had worked on a little. Dean gave Cas a tour. Although someone who knew him might have said that Dean was still subdued, he did seem to enjoy talking about something that he didn’t have to keep secret.

“I’m not going to worry about the living room until last,” he said as he let Cas in the front door, which opened directly into the living room. “That’s just going to be for people to walk through and get wanded.”

“‘Wanded’?”

“Metal detector wands. We’re going to use ours, and we’ll let them bring theirs to use on us if they want. Obviously the security guys will still be armed – if the Hunters have a problem with that, too bad.”

“The Hunters, that’s their names?”

Dean looked briefly contemptuous. “That’s like, a gang name. Don’t look worried. These aren’t dangerous types.” He waved at a staircase that rose from the living room. “Bedrooms upstairs. We won’t be using those.”

“I hope not.”

He led Cas down the hall off the living room and turned right, into a big open room with windows that had a view of the woods beside and behind the house. A long counter/breakfast bar partially separated this room from the kitchen.

“Former dining room, now the conference room. I’m going to ditch that table and the three chairs in one of the bedrooms, bring in a table that seats six.”

“Well, the room will hold it.” Cas looked at one wall, puzzled. “There was a filing cabinet in the dining room?”

It was a gray four-drawer cabinet with a key sticking out of the lock. “No, Dad asked me to bring that in. Mine not to reason why.”

Then he turned suddenly, grabbed Cas, and hugged him hard.

The embrace turned into a kiss, deep and passionate, which Cas returned fully, holding on to Dean.

Dean broke away as suddenly as he’d clinched. “Sorry, man. Lured you to an abandoned house and attacked you.”

Cas laughed, running a hand down Dean’s arm.

“Let’s see, what else? Private conference room this way.”

Dean stepped back out into the hall and pointed at a room across the way from the dining room. “I think that’s supposed to be a den. I figured I’d fix it up in case we want to talk without them overhearing, or vice versa.”

“Wouldn’t your father be nervous about meeting with you and leaving them alone in the house?”

“Of course he would be. There’ll be security, electronic and a couple WinForce guys, as well as Bella. I think they’re bringing their own security too, although from what I know of these guys, I doubt it’s up to WinForce standards. I have the feeling it’s more like, ‘Didn’t you know Bob, who played football in high school? He looks tough, let’s bring him out to the coast with us.’”

Cas chuckled. “Where are they coming from?”

“Minneapolis.” Dean was leading the way down the hall, pointing to the other room across the hallway. “Freshly sterilized bathroom.” He stepped into a room on the same side of the hallway as the kitchen/dining room. “And the mud room or laundry room, whatever you want to call it. I started the machines. They both work. So we can’t have cold beer, but we can wash our clothes.”

“No cold beer? Untenable.”

“Yeah, that’ll change before the conference, believe me.”

The house’s back door was in this room. Cas opened it and saw woods in back of the house, along with a detached garage. “We’ll have a security guy here and one at the front, as well as one in the conference room,” Dean said. “I’m thinkin’ it’s probably three more than we’ll need.”

Cas glanced from the back door to a door in the opposite wall. “So you can park your car, bring your groceries in through the laundry room – ”

Dean opened the other door, revealing the kitchen, with the breakfast bar and the dining room beyond it. “— and into the kitchen.”

Cas closed the back door, shooting the deadbolt, and followed a couple of steps behind Dean back into the dining room, then into the hallway and the living room in front. He quickly planted the microphone under the edge of the breakfast bar on the way.

Cas left work at noon on Monday to “go to an inspection site.” He drove to the cabin Dean had rented. He was only there for a few minutes, looking the place over, driving away with his jaw set.

It was late afternoon before he got back to his place. Naomi called about an hour later. “The contingency plan is in effect.”

Cas closed his eyes. “Understood.”

“I’m told that you have a plan for meeting the others.”

“We do.”

“Give me a report.”

“I will.”

He disconnected and called Dean. “Could you use some company?”

“I’d probably put you to work.”

“That’s all right. I’ll be over with cold beer in half an hour.”

“Sounds good.”

At every stoplight he opened and closed his hands; he couldn’t stop himself from clenching the steering wheel.

He drove to a beautiful old library with incongruously new split-level homes around it; some were still under construction. One of the homes had ghosts swaying gently from tree branches; under the turning leaves of another house’s tree, a scarecrow with a jack-o’-lantern head sat jauntily in a lawn chair. The trees of the woodsy area blackened the midnight-blue horizon a few blocks away.

Kelvin got out of a task force car, looking around carefully. The library had closed a couple of hours ago, and the night was chilly; none of the residents was venturing out.

“This is Bella Talbot’s,” Kelvin said, opening a piece of cloth that he’d brought with him from the car. Inside the cloth was an old-fashioned six-shot revolver with a very long barrel.

“You’re kidding.”

“It’s a Colt Paterson. Gotta say this for the woman, she keeps her collection in good shape, clean and loaded.”

“She keeps her gun collection loaded?”

“Place better never catch fire, it’s gonna go up like a munitions factory. I tested it, and it works great. I reloaded it. It’s got a pretty heavy trigger pull, be prepared for that. Have you got gloves? – OK,” as Cas pulled them out of an inside pocket of his trench coat. “Her fingerprints are on the barrel, try not to rub that.”

“Thanks.” Cas pulled on the gloves, took the bundle, and flipped the cloth lightly, just covering the gun. He looked around too. Only one other person was on the street, a guy in a suit and tie walking toward them.

“Sure you don’t want me to do this?” Kelvin asked.

“Would you want to walk away and let someone else do your dirty work?”

Kelvin shook his head, and Hozai walked up to them. “I walked a little way down the road, just looking for cameras in the trees or on the ground. There are none.”

“You wanted to look in the trees, so you put on a business suit?” Kelvin was mildly amused.

“Even if you’re walking around in the dark, people don’t suspect you if you’re wearing a tie. I mean, do I look like a cat burglar?”

“You look like your car got a flat.”

“Exactly.” Hozai glanced at Cas, looked back at Kelvin. “Let’s get this over with.”

A narrow paved lane speared off from the suburban road, marked with a sign that read “Private Street.” Hozai only rolled down the lane quietly a few yards before pulling the car over into the trees a hundred yards from the side of the house. The lane ran in front of the cabin, with cleared ground ready for development on the other side.

Cas left the cloth in the car, carrying the Colt as the three approached the house from the side. There were points of light from the streetlights out on the main road, light through the curtains of the cabin; everything in between was dark. An owl sent out a warning at their approach.

Cas peered into a slit between curtains in a side window. It was the dining room window. Dean was sitting at the table, but he wasn’t working on the house. He was finishing loading an automatic pistol, racking the slide.

Cas’ forehead wrinkled a bit, but they kept going. They stepped up onto the veranda that led to the front door, and Cas picked the lock quickly. The three of them walked in quietly – Hozai’s businesslike shoes had rubber soles – and Cas closed the door with a gentle click. He made a gesture sending Kelvin and Hozai to wait on the staircase, and started down the hall.

Just before he got to the dining room door, his feet dragged to a stop. He lowered his head, overwhelmed by the enormity of what he was about to do.

“Cas? That you?” Dean called.

He looked up and over at Kelvin and Hozai. He gave them a reassuring nod as he started toward the dining room door. “It’s me. How’s the work going?”

He stepped into the dining room. Dean had just put the automatic in the back of his waistband, and turned with a question in his eyes.

Two gunshots punched the silence. Kelvin and Hozai started for the dining room.

Cas knelt beside Dean’s sprawled form, putting the Colt on the floor, and gathered Dean up. Dean’s shirt and jacket were soaked with scarlet, but there were only a few dots on his face. His eyes were open and, like the rest of him, unmoving. Castiel could hear the other agents’ footsteps running down the hall.

Kelvin went to Cas as Cas was closing Dean’s eyelids with his gloved hands. Hozai paused in the doorway, sweeping his gaze around the kitchen and dining room.

“Is he gone?” Kelvin asked.

Cas pressed the pulse point in Dean’s neck and nodded. His voice was quiet. “There’s something on the table.”

Kelvin picked it up, a piece of paper with a rough drawing and some hand-written names on it, as Hozai headed into the kitchen. “Looks like a seating chart. Probably for the meeting.”

Hozai circled the breakfast bar with an empty wastebasket. “We’ll need more of these, if we’re lucky,” he said, turning the key in the filing cabinet. “We won’t look at the files now, just get them out to – ”

He looked into the top drawer, and his body bucked as though he’d been kicked in the gut.

Then he said, loudly but with control, “Bomb. Nineteen seconds. Everyone out. Bomb.”

Cas snapped his head up. Clutching the paper in his left hand, Kelvin reached down with his right hand and seized Cas’ arm. Cas remembered to grab the Colt as Kelvin helped him to his feet, and they all ran down the hall toward the front door.

Dean’s eyes popped open and he sucked in a huge breath. But at the same time he was rolling, scrambling to his feet, heading for the door to the laundry room.

He threw the door closed behind him as he started past the washer and dryer, but it burst open again as the bomb went off, a roaring boom with a shock that he felt in his chest and ears. He staggered, grabbing the back-door knob, as an acrid gray cloud blew into the room.

He wrenched the door open with a gagging cough, slammed it shut behind him and vaulted the back porch railing, running toward the garage.

The tears filling and re-filling his eyes made seeing hard. He tried to cough quietly, sucking in air as he ran. He went to the other side of the garage and headed to trees beyond it where the Impala waited for him, the black car almost invisible in the darkness.

He leaped into the driver’s seat and pulled the keys out of his jacket, ruined with fake blood. But he absolutely had to stop and cough. His eyes and nose were streaming.

He pulled off the jacket and wiped his face with its sleeve, getting rid of the fake blood on his face too. There was something on his jawline below his right ear, a pink trickle. Broken eardrum.

He balled up the jacket and pushed it under the car’s seat, then picked up the new jacket on the seat next to him and put it on. He zipped it up enough to cover the fake blood on his shirt, and now his eyes and throat were enough under control that he could drive.

The car started with its characteristic roar, but he wasn’t worried. The agents were certainly as far on the other side of the house as they could get, the fire from the bomb was snapping wood, and a car alarm was going off. He was more concerned about the lights, so he just used the parking lights to pick his way through the trees, a pre-determined route that led away from the house but back to the private road.

When he reached the intersection of the private road and a public street, he could hear sirens behind him. He turned on the headlights, pulled out onto the street, and drove away, carefully obeying the speed limit.

The three task force agents were yards away from the house when the bomb went, and its shockwave blew out a couple of front windows to dissipate in the open air, so they didn’t feel it as much. Dean’s red Mustang, parked right in front, did feel it: It rocked on its tires and its alarm went off, horn blaring and lights flashing.

Kelvin and Hozai stopped running when they realized that Cas had stopped. “I need to plant the gun,” he told them, turned and walked back a few steps, and coughed.

“Wait. What the hell is that?” Hozai said, pointing to the car.

The flashing lights were revealing a gray cloud that had enveloped the car and was rolling lazily outward in all directions.

“Back up, back up,” Hozai ordered, and they all did. “Smell that?”

Kelvin did, and he coughed too.

“Acid,” Hozai said. “That was the corrosion device.”

Kevin shook his head numbly, blinking his eyes.

“That was?” Cas barked. “You’re telling me – This whole thing – ”

They stood in horrified silence for three seconds. Then Cas strode toward the house and the braying car.

“Castiel!” It was an urgent semi-whisper from Hozai.

The cloud was thinning as it spread, but not fast. Cas coughed and wiped his eyes as he walked in front of the veranda and flung the gun under a bush, as though it had been dropped by someone running out the front door.

He dropped to his knees. He shook his head, then swiveled his gaze slowly from west to north. Across the cleared ground, he saw a long black car driving east.

And in the corner of his eye, he saw another car, suddenly strident with siren and red and white lights, heading west on the private road toward them.

He leaped to his feet and joined the others. They ran flat-out, under cover of trees and darkness, until they reached the main road. They’d fled so far from the police that they’d overshot their cars by several blocks.

Hozai caught his breath, yanked at his tie and unbuttoned his shirt’s neck button, wiped his face. Then he told the others, “Let’s not draw attention with three guys all walking down the street at night. You two stay here, back in the trees. I’ll see if I can get the car without police attention and bring it back here. I’ll drive a circle to make sure there’s no surveillance, and then drop you off at your car, Castiel.”

“And nobody will look twice at you,” Kelvin said. “Sorry for making fun of your suit. Even if I don’t think it’d help me.” Kelvin was black.

“Probably right,” Hozai said ruefully. “If I’m not back here in ten minutes, keep moving and notify Naomi.”

But he was back in seven minutes. Kelvin got into the passenger seat and Cas collapsed in the back.

They drove in silence for a couple of minutes, hearing sirens cluster behind them. A police car passed them going fast the opposite direction.

Kelvin used his smartphone flashlight to look at the seating chart he was still holding.

“What – the hell – was that.” It was almost more an angry statement than a question from Hozai.

Kelvin turned to ask Castiel, “Who are Christian, Mark, and Gwen?”

After a moment, Cas replied, “The grandchildren of Samuel Campbell’s brother.”

“The Hunters that the Winchesters were planning to meet with in that house.”

“Yes.”

Kelvin frowned. “Any reason to think that they had anything to do with the murders of John Winchester’s wife and dad?”

“None. They were children at the time. I’m not sure Mark was even born yet.”

“Well, this seating chart – There’s only two labeled items. One is a table, with names around it. John at one end, Christian at the other. The other two Hunters on either side of Christian, Dean and Bella on either side of John. All the Campbells at one end of the table. The other thing that’s labeled is the filing cabinet. It’s in back of Christian’s chair.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Murder plot,” Hozai said. “That’s why the relatively long lead time on the bomb. Say, Dean’s there, everyone does the security thing, Dean gets everyone seated, don’t know why Dad and Bella aren’t here, but let’s talk about some possible work in the Twin Cities. Opens the filing cabinet.”

“He’s miked,” Kelvin said. “Something he says is a code, so he says it while he opens the filing cabinet, and John rings the doorbell.”

“Probably wouldn’t even need to bring John out there,” Hozai said. “Security guy rings the doorbell. Dean says, ‘Finally! You guys enjoy your drinks, I’ll be right back,’ and walks out of the room like there’s no problem.”

“And then he and the security guys run like hell,” Kelvin said.

“But it makes no sense,” Cas said. “To begin with, if Dean was in on this plot, he certainly wouldn’t have told me about the meeting and showed me the house. And second, why? The Campbells are certainly no threat to John professionally. They were children when Samuel Campbell committed the Men of Letters massacre. They weren’t even Samuel’s children, or grandchildren. Why would John want them killed?”

“Crazy stuff?” Kelvin said. “Exterminate the bloodline, that kind of thing?”

Cas shook his head.

After a few moments, and sounding as though someone had already disagreed with him, Hozai said, “We were right that the Winchesters had the corrosion device. And we’re right that something bad is going to happen in India during Diwali. We just have to figure out what.”

“The cops will find the gun within the hour, if they haven’t already,” Kelvin said. “And the bomb makes it look like Bella was covering her forensic tracks. She’ll tell us about India. Couple of days.”

Cas stared silently out the window.

For half an hour, Dean drove a winding nonsense route, mostly through residential areas where another car behind him on the road would be obvious. When he was satisfied that he wasn’t being tailed, he pulled over to the curb on a quiet street, killed the lights and the engine, and let the light from a street lamp through the windshield be his illumination.

He reached into the right inner pocket of his new jacket and pulled out two objects: A wallet and a passport. The wallet contained a driver’s license and credit card. He dug under the seat and pulled a large wad of cash from the pocket of the old jacket, stuffed it into the new wallet.

He opened the passport, staring at the picture and name. The skin around his eyes tensed. Then his face relaxed; he even smiled a little.

Dean Winchester would never say anything, ever again. From now on the guy talking would be Dean Samuels.

He put the passport and wallet back in his jacket and reached into the left inner pocket, pulling out a phone he’d only owned for three days.

When the call was answered he said, “Everything’s OK. Where am I going?”


	9. Chapter 9

On Tuesday afternoon, Bella Talbot was questioned in the murder of Dean Winchester. She was interviewed at the local police station by both a police detective, about the murder, and by an FBI agent, because the theft of the reactant and setting off the corrosion device were both federal crimes. On Tuesday night, she was arrested for the murder and complicity in the theft.

The WinForce attorney who accompanied her, John Wilson, said that it was absurd to arrest someone for murder when the theoretical crime scene was merely a burned-out acid-eaten smear inside a shell of a room. The FBI agent informed Wilson that, in fact, finger bones had been found in the room, and that, coupled with Dean’s car being parked outside and the fact that Dean hadn’t been seen since, would be perfectly adequate to convince any jury that Dean had been not only shot but obliterated by a jealous woman whose gun had been found outside and who had sent an enraged text message to the victim. (The agent did not tell them that the burned, acid-bathed bones could yield no DNA.)

“This is ridiculous! I never even heard of that place until you told me about the crime,” Bella exclaimed.

“Well,” her interrogator said in a reasonable tone, “Dean Winchester rented the place using a WinForce credit card, so it seems probable that it was being used for WinForce business.”

“Seems probable that it was being used by Dean to screw his nancy boyfriend,” Bella spat.

“Bella,” her lawyer said.

“We’ve spoken to Mr. diAngelo,” the agent said. “He admits that he went to the house once, to pick up Dean and take him to dinner. He states that Dean himself described the place as a pit, and was fixing it up for some sort of company project.”

“And you believe that.”

“Bella,” Wilson repeated. “Please let me engage with the agent.”

The agent had a faint smile on his face. “I’ve seen the place, Ms. Talbot. We have photos of the parts of the house that were undamaged by the bomb. I’d say Dean’s description was accurate. Now, Mr. diAngelo says that they met on two occasions at John Winchester’s home, which he described as luxurious. They also met at Mr. diAngelo’s own home, not luxurious but very comfortable, and they were seen together at an upscale resort over a long weekend.” He shook his head as if trying to figure out a baffling puzzle. “It just seems unlikely that gay men with a taste for posh surroundings chose this pit as a love nest. And it seems unlikely that Mr. diAngelo would have shot Mr. Winchester with your gun – which had been fired twice.”

“It’s perfectly likely!” Bella exclaimed, and Wilson widened his eyes with an I-give-up look. “Three of my guns were stolen! He stole them to frame me!”

“Oh, it was stolen.” The agent looked very interested, pen hovering over a notepad, ready to take a note. “When did you report that theft?”

Silence.

“Something’s going on,” Wilson said later, when he was consulting privately with Bella. He’d been a mob lawyer before going on the WinForce payroll. “It’s moving too fast. They know too much. Something’s going to happen in the next day or two.” He met Bella’s gaze. “Until we know what’s going on, stop talking. I mean it. I don’t care if they start slandering your mother’s virtue. Don’t say a word.”

Bella’s white knight arrived at 4 p.m. on Wednesday. Naomi even wore white for the occasion, though she doubted if Bella appreciated the symbolism. Naomi laid out the situation for Bella and Wilson: The convincing case, a prosecutor eager to rack up a win, the effect on a jury of imagining a man dissolving in a rain of fiery acid. But Bella was lucky: a limited-time offer was on the table, good for eighteen hours only, involving witness protection and a new life for Bella, in exchange for information.

“She’s not interested in any deals you’re offering,” the lawyer said.

“She’s not? Or John Winchester’s not?” Naomi asked.

Wilson looked condescending. “I’ve told Ms. Talbot that there is a technical conflict of interest if I represent her in this matter. She’s signed a waiver, because she knows that WinForce needs her and has her best interests in mind.”

“Oh. Good.” The most delicate sarcasm.

“I don’t need to hear it anyway,” Bella said. “I know what they want. They’re trading me for John.”

“Not exactly,” Naomi said. “We do want details on John Winchester’s illegal activities, but that alone would only be good for a sentence reduction. What lets you walk free is information, now, before anyone dies, about what’s planned in Punjab during Diwali.”

Bella sat back in her chair and stared at the table.

“Very clever,” Wilson said. “Is this a way of getting her to say that she might know something, when in fact she doesn’t?”

Naomi looked the lawyer in the eyes. “I’m not playing games or trying to strategize. I’m dead serious. We know that something violent is planned in India during a massive five-day festival. If it happens, Ms. Talbot will never see daylight again except from a prison yard. If we can stop it, Ms. Talbot can have a life – possibly a little quieter than she prefers, but a life. We’re going to get WinForce and its owner sooner or later. We have time to devote to it. But Ms. Talbot has only eighteen hours to save lives in Punjab. If she doesn’t, she will suffer the consequences of having murdered Dean Winchester. And when the case against WinForce is resolved, she’ll suffer the consequences of the ‘arrangements’ she made for it.”

“You framed me,” Bella said in a tone of discovery. “It wasn’t that little mama’s boy. It was you.”

Naomi looked briefly impatient. “If that’s the defense you want to use, you’re free to use it, Ms. Talbot. ‘I don’t know who did it – No wait, the victim’s boyfriend framed me – No wait, law enforcement framed me.’ You are perfectly free to take that defense into court, in a trial that I’m sure your attorney will drag out with as many delays as possible. And even so, you’ll be in prison when John Winchester is arrested, and you’ll be in prison when you’re charged with committing crimes for WinForce. And then you’ll want to cut a deal. But doesn’t it make more sense to cut the deal now?”

“All right, she’s heard the offer,” the lawyer said. “Thank you for coming in. She’ll consider it and get back to you.”

Naomi stood. “Eighteen hours, Ms. Talbot. As of ten o’clock tomorrow morning, you’re looking at life in prison. But maybe that’s your desire, to take one for the team.”

“Her desire is to see her innocence proven in court, which it will be.”

Naomi raised her eyebrows and nodded, letting the lawyer have the last word, as she picked up her purse and started for the door.

“I want a different lawyer,” Bella said.

“Bella, stop,” Wilson said. “Think about this. Of course you can change attorneys if you want, but if you think about it for a day or two you’ll realize – ”

She looked directly at him. “You’re fired.” She looked up at Naomi. “I know the lawyer I want, but I don’t have my phone, so I don’t know his number.”

“I’m sure someone can look it up for you,” Naomi said.

At 3 a.m. on Friday morning – 6:30 Thursday evening in Washington, D.C. – police in a mid-size city of Punjab arrested a low-level mobster as he was planting a bomb with an electronic timer in the banquet room of a popular local restaurant. The town’s chief of police had been planning to celebrate the first night of Diwali with a dinner for his staff and their spouses. He had asked his secretary to make the arrangements, and she – for the equivalent of $100,000 – had arranged for that room in that restaurant, per Bella Talbot’s instructions. 

The bomb-planting mobster promptly rolled on his boss, who was dumb enough to leave evidence in his home implicating his boss. That boss’s computer yielded a trove of correspondence with a WinForce subsidiary discussing “the item,” the efficiency with which it worked and the attitude people would have toward a “competitor” who was able to employ such “advanced equipment.” Then, the previous Monday, there had been an abrupt change in the dialogue. The item was deficient, non-working; the WinForce subsidiary would send a substitute that would work almost as well, and refund the mobster’s money to boot. That was the bomb that was being planted on Friday.

(“I don’t know anything about this stupid meeting,” Bella would say. “The corrosion device was meant for Punjab. They had it in a secured facility. It was supposed to go out on Monday on a private WinForce plane. They went out to the facility on Monday morning, and it was just gone. Device and reactant. Nothing else touched. You could have heard John in Florida.”)

But Punjabi investigators didn’t read the mobster’s computer correspondence until days later. On Friday, after rapid consultation with his staff and some high-level string-pulling, the chief of police moved his party to another venue – the original was still being processed as a crime scene – and almost everyone who’d originally planned to attend did so. Heavy police presence and a certain nervousness in the crowd didn’t make the food any less delicious or the conversation any less interesting. Warm yellow candles in red clay holders on every table gave the room a lovely light.

On Thursday night, Naomi sent a text message to the task force members: “Crisis averted. You have all saved at least twenty lives.” She wasn’t just trying to reassure them that the contingency plan had been worthwhile, she was acting as a news service. With no bloodshed involved, the arrest of a guy planning to bomb the party of a police chief in India ranked, on U.S. internet news feeds, just below the story of a ten-thousand-dollar toy given to a Kardashian child.

Christian, Gwen, and Mark Campbell were baffled at police questioning, and thought at first that they were being accused of Dean’s murder. But there was no evidence that they had ever left town, much less plotted the death of someone they’d never met. No representative of WinForce had ever contacted them regarding a rapprochement or work – although Christian asked a detective, “What do you think, could WinForce use some contacts in the Twin Cities?”

At 4 a.m. on Saturday, a little more than five days after the corrosion device had gone off, a man driving a plain gray car punched in the code on the gate at John Winchester’s compound. He drove the car halfway through the gate, then stopped, blocking anyone from closing it, as he and another man leaped out and used chains to keep the gate open, then moved out of the way while a caravan of marked and unmarked cars sped down the long drive to the main house and to the other buildings.

Federal agents bearing no-knock warrants swept through the compound, as well as a small, well secured storeroom in the Virginia countryside. The storeroom didn’t hold much – most of John’s merchandise, legal and illegal, was held overseas – but the few items in the storeroom were of astonishing lethality. They included the structure for another corrosion device, just waiting for reactant.

At the compound, agents also searched for weapons and explosive devices, but also for computers, paper files, correspondence, disks, tapes, telephones – essentially, anything capable of holding information.

When John was wakened by a call from the guard in the monitor room, the first thing he did was to call the lawyer who lived on the premises. By the time John reached the living room, dressed in black denim jeans and a gray T-shirt, the lawyer, dressed in a navy bathrobe with gold trim and glasses dangling from a chain around his neck, was holding a warrant, looking it over while agents hurried down hallways or opened living-room cabinets.

“Is that any good?” Winchester asked the lawyer.

“I’m afraid so.”

“I called Bobby.” Singer lived in a separate house on the compound. “They’re all over his place too.”

“They’d better have a warrant specifically for that building.” The lawyer addressed John, but looked at the agent in charge.

“We do,” the agent replied.

“We’ll see,” the lawyer said. He looked at John. “I’m going to look at every damn warrant they’re serving, make sure that every ‘i’ is dotted.”

“Do it,” Winchester said.

“I’m afraid I’m going to have to ask you to stay here,” the agent said. “But I have copies of all warrants for you to examine.”

He opened a folio he was carrying and produced a small sheaf of paperwork, handing it to the lawyer. The lawyer took the papers, shot a glance at John, and moved over to a chair to examine them, putting on his spectacles.

“You sons of bitches.” While his language was angry, John’s voice was calm as he addressed the agent. “I lost my son five days ago. And you pull this.”

“I’m sorry for your loss,” the agent said courteously. “And I understand how intrusive this can be. Ten days ago, I had to go to the home of a woman, wake her up in the middle of the night to tell her that her husband had been killed. And we were pretty sure it was just a straightforward robbery, he was a guard at a research facility, but eventually we had to ask her all kinds of questions about the family finances and so forth, trying to determine if he was an inside man they disposed of. She was very upset too. Turns out, no evidence of that. He was just a guy who got murdered because he was doing his job.” He was looking John square in the eyes. “This kind of thing is hard on everyone.”

John’s lips parted for a moment. Then he closed his mouth, turned away, and sat down near the lawyer.

As it turned out, John had wiped his computers of all information about illegal transactions – probably, they figured, the day that Bella fired her WinForce attorney. They never did find the backup. Thanks to Bella’s information and a couple of paper records, they were able to find enough to revoke John’s Federal Firearms License and to impose hefty fines on both him and Bobby Singer.

But the guard’s murder didn’t require computerized proof. Bella knew who had done the robbery, and he rolled on John in exchange for a plea deal. He told the agents how John had described Dean’s previous robbery and provided the supplies. Bella told them that John had wanted Dean for the robbery, but didn’t want Dean handling such dangerous material without knowing what it was, and he had the feeling that Dean would balk at helping obtain a weapon which (as Hozai had pointed out) had no battlefield use.

After many trial delays and much negotiation, John went to prison – though not for as long as Naomi would have liked – and Bella wound up as a waitress in a suburb of Salt Lake City.

But that was all months in the future. On Monday, a week after the corrosion device went off, John held a private memorial service for Dean in an auditorium at WinForce. Sam and Jess attended, though Sam didn’t speak at the service; he said he’d get too emotional. The couple sat in the row behind John and Bobby and some of their friends. Sam spoke with John and Bobby after the service, briefly and quietly, introducing them to Jess and giving his father a hug before they parted.

Almost all WinForce employees attended the service, whether they’d known Dean or not. Several of Dean’s friends from school and some of the women he’d dated were notified. Cas diAngelo was not invited.

As it happened, Cas was occupied at the time anyway, meeting with Naomi. He was sitting bolt upright in the chair at her desk; she leaned forward, hands clasped tensely on the desk in front of her. Castiel’s badge, gun, and key card for the offices lay between them.

“I wish you’d reconsider, Castiel.”

“I have considered it carefully, many times, over this past week. This is not a rash decision.”

“You understand the situation, what was at stake. Something had to be done.”

“I agree. I do not agree that murder, and framing someone for a murder she didn’t commit, were the right course of action.”

“You did agree to it. You committed the murder.”

Cas closed his eyes, opened them. “I did.”

“But if you thought it was wrong – ”

“I convinced myself that it was worth sacrificing one life to save several, perhaps many lives. In the days since then, I’ve realized that we were wrong. I was wrong.”

“It was the only way – ”

“We don’t know that. The police in Punjab may have discovered something. I’m sure that Sam had told Dean about the corrosion device; maybe if I’d leaned on Dean more heavily, he would have talked. We could have brought Bella in and bluffed her.”

“And all of those would have involved more time than we had.”

“Possibly. All I know is that I should not have done what I did.”

“There’s no point in your trying to assume all of the guilt here. It was my idea, and I gave the order. The responsibility is mine, not yours. You shouldn’t sacrifice your career for something that is my responsibility.” Her voice caught a bit. “You shouldn’t leave us – for something that is my responsibility.”

“I have to. And I am sorrier than I can say. But I have to.”

“It was a freakish set of circumstances. It won’t happen again.”

“Won’t it?” Cas tilted his head. “Once we’ve done it, and accomplished what we wanted to accomplish, how much easier will it be for us to do it again? Maybe next time we won’t kill anyone. Maybe next time we’ll just frame an innocent person, or – ”

“Innocent!” Naomi said with disgust.

“Bella Talbot was forced to plead guilty to avoid going to prison for a crime she did not commit. Maybe the next person we frame will be innocent of anything. A casualty of what we consider necessary. We can’t be like – them, Naomi. We can’t become like the John Winchesters and Bella Talbots of the world. We lose our – We lose our reason for action.”

“Naïve.”

“I think there’s nothing more realistic. And since you know that’s how I feel, would you trust me to take part in any future – contingency plans?”

She moved back a little, looked into middle distance, looked back at him. “I assume I can trust you with this one.”

“Yes, you can. I won’t betray the task force, Naomi.”

“I’m sure you understand how serious that would be.”

He sighed a little. “I suppose, under these circumstances, you’re forced to make threats.”

“I’m simply – ”

“I do understand what the consequences of betrayal would be. As I’m sure you understand that I’ve taken precautions that will expose the contingency plan if anything should happen to me.”

Her eyes flashed, but, after a moment, she had her voice under control. “Don’t be ridiculous, Castiel. Melodramatic. Nothing’s going to ‘happen’ to you. I wouldn’t do that.”

“I believe that,” Castiel said. “At least, I believe you mean that at this moment.”

She shook her head, looking both angry and hurt, as he stood. “Goodbye, Naomi. Please tell the others how much I’ve enjoyed working with them.”

She didn’t say anything until he reached the door. When his hand was on the latch she said, not looking at him, “Do you need anything?”

“No. I’ll be all right.” He looked around at her. “Thank you, Naomi. These past years have meant more to me than I can say.”

“Wait!”

He turned, startled.

She laughed a little shame-facedly, pointing at his key card on the desk. “You’ll need me to let you out.”

“Oh. Yes.”

They didn’t hug at the door, but their goodbye was warm. She warned him about the paperwork and exit interview that he’d need to go through, and he said he understood. He thought there were tears in her eyes; there may have been tears in his.

He left “his” car – it actually belonged to the government, of course – in the parking lot and took a bus north. Then he took a bus west, and then one southbound. He kept an easy but alert, observant gaze all around him as he did this.

While he was waiting at a stop for another westbound bus, he dialed a number on a phone he’d only owned for ten days, let it ring twice, and hung up.

The second westbound bus stopped at a shopping center with a large parking lot. He was walking along the parking lot’s border when a blue Nissan Versa pulled up beside him and stopped. Castiel got into the car, and disappeared.


	10. Chapter 10

“Perfect timing,” said Sam Winchester, who was driving.

“Yes. Are you certain of the car?”

Sam shot him a glance of amused reproof. “I went to the rental place, walked out into the middle of the lot, and picked a car at random. If this car’s bugged, it’s because they’ve bugged every rental car in Washington, D.C. But how about you?”

“I have not been followed. Did you observe – ”

“Yes, I observed everyone around us going from the service back to the hotel, called a cab to pick me up at the side entrance, checked my clothes – all the stuff you told Dean and me to do. It just struck me when I was driving in, though – there were probably security cameras in that parking lot.”

“Oh, that reminds me. No, there weren’t.” The man wearing the trench coat reached for his phone, pressed a number, let it ring twice, and disconnected.

“Some kind of signal?” Sam asked.

“I have a friend who’s good with electronics. Thanks to her, the shopping center’s security cameras developed a glitch about twenty minutes before I arrived. She’ll put them back on line now.”

“Useful friend to have. Is she the one who put Dean’s Facebook page together, and she’s been posting under the names of different supposed friends?”

“Yes. Our driver’s licenses, passports, and credit cards are valid too. I’m afraid she was doing much of that work during the time when she was supposed to be breaking into WinForce computers. Of course, establishing identities is quite quick for her, she does that kind of thing all the time. And by that time she was convinced that if she focused on WinForce alone, the contingency plan would go into effect. She began using her very considerable talent to help with – ” he smiled a little – “our own contingency plan.”

“When did you find out – Wait, first things first. Dean says I should call you Jim now?”

“Jim Novak.” Novak tilted his head. “Jimmy, maybe. That sounds unthreatening.”

Sam shook his head. “I told Dean he shouldn’t keep his real first name.”

“Well, maybe James is my real first name. You don’t know.”

“True.” Sam shot a quick glance at his passenger. “Dean’s been – He doesn’t like to talk about the situation, and I don’t blame him. And he may not even know. But I wondered when you found out about the – I’m not going to call it the contingency plan, that’s euphemistic bull. When did you find out about the plot to murder Dean?”

Jimmy was quiet for a moment.

Then he said, “I deduced it, Friday before last.”

Sam did some quick mental calculation. “My God! You worked that whole thing out in four days?”

“Dean and I did. I doubt if I could have done it alone in that time. I realized it very early on Friday morning, and the first thing I did was to call Dean and tell him I wanted to take a drive in the Impala that night. I knew he was close to finishing it, but it would probably take him most or all of the next day to finish the car, which would keep him safely at the Winchester compound until he came to my place. A few hours later, I went to the office and confronted my boss.”

“You did? I’d have thought you’d try to keep your objections under the radar.”

“I did – my real objections. I didn’t say that this was a profoundly wrong and immoral thing to do, sinking us to the level of the people we’re trying to stop. I said I was angry because the plan was being kept from me, that it showed a lack of trust in me. I said it was important to me that I should actually do the killing, because I needed to take responsibility for my own case and my own actions.”

“Trying to make sure that no one else did it when you weren’t around.”

“Exactly.” Jimmy sighed a little. “That night Dean picked me up. We went to a secluded place, and I told him everything.”

After a moment’s pause, Sam said, “I’m surprised he didn’t punch you.”

“I was too. But I think his – devastation was too deep for that. I tried to – I tried to convince him that I do love him, enough to betray my compatriots. But he didn’t – Well, why should he have believed me?”

“But he went along with the plan.”

“I did convince him that his life was in danger. To the point that he began carrying a gun, just in case it was required. I was hoping to persuade him to become a government informant, but he couldn’t quite make himself do it.”

Sam nodded. “One of the things Dean’s kicking himself over is that he wouldn’t testify against Dad, but he’d let Bella do it. He figures it makes him a coward, as well as a lousy son.”

“What do you figure?”

Sam glanced into the rear-view mirror before answering. “I think Dad put Dean in an impossible position. He insisted that Dean protect him always – it was like a condition of his loving Dean. But at the same time he didn’t hesitate to get Dean involved in criminal activities. He didn’t protect Dean. And yeah, Dean made his own choices, but so did Dad. And Dad operates – He believes in right and wrong, when it comes to other people. But when it comes to John Winchester, anything that benefits him is right. Anything. I think he just expected that Dean would grow up believing that. He never expected that Dean would struggle between protecting his father and protecting the world from his father. Dean was in an impossible situation. He did what he had to do.”

Jimmy nodded. “After his first burst of rage and disappointment at me, he told me that you had called to tell him about the corrosion device. He asked me if it was true, about your father having it and its not being a battlefield weapon. He sounded like someone being forced to face a horrifying truth.”

“Yeah, he tried so hard, since Dad went into the business, to tell himself that, hey, guys want to go to war, they’re going to get the weapons anyway, might as well get them from Dad. And I do think Dad conducted a legitimate business for a while. But, you know – ”

Sam sighed. “ – he’s a crook. I don’t think he’s ever done anything that he didn’t eventually try to get more money out of it by breaking the law. Some mobster, some terrorist offers him a pile of money to deal with them – ”

He cleared his throat. “So when did you come up with the idea of faking Dean’s death?”

“Actually, Dean came up with that. He was saying, ‘Well hell, I’ll just steal the bomb. I know where Dad keeps that kind of thing, I know how to get around the security.’ And then he got an odd look on his face and said, ‘Did you say the stuff dissolves a body’?”

Jimmy gave a small smile. “He’d been so emotional – about me, about his father – for a moment I thought he was being suicidal. But when he started explaining what he meant, I wasn’t that surprised. He’d told me that sometimes he just wanted to disappear.”

Sam glanced at Jimmy, back at the road. “I never knew he felt like that. I know something was building for years. I figured if Dad didn’t retire real soon, he and Dean would have a huge blow-up and Dean would take off. He never told me he wanted to disappear.”

“He told me that – ” Jimmy searched his memory – “five days before I told him about myself, about the contingency plan.”

Sam raised his eyebrows. “He must really – He’s never said anything like that to me.”

“Probably trying to protect you from his own needs. And probably a matter of pride, as well. He wouldn’t want to admit that you made the right choice and he made the wrong one.”

Sam grinned briefly. “No he would not.”

There were a few minutes of silence. Sam merged onto a freeway headed south.

“Jess is still at the hotel?” Jimmy asked.

Another grin. “Yeah. She insisted that she’s going to order room service dinner for two, keep up the pretense that I’m still there. Don’t know what she’s going to do with all the food.”

“I’m sure Dean has told you how valuable your assistance was. And Jess’ parents. I wanted to add my – well, more than appreciation, my deep gratitude.”

“Well, we did think about it, talked about whether there might be blowback that would hurt Dave and Kelsey. But it’s not like Dean called up and asked me to do anything illegal. He just needed us to find a couple of rental places and find someone with a different last name to rent one of them. Well, Jess loves going on real estate sites, looking at places in different parts of the country, so that was a snap for her. She found the place for the fake meeting first, and then she was the one who suggested that her mom and dad rent the place where Dean’s staying now. Their name’s Moore, you know. She figured you just about can’t blend into the landscape better than being a retired couple named Moore who rents a place in a warmer climate for the winter. They’re even thinking they might actually spend a few weeks there, after we give them the go-ahead that the place is empty.”

“I know Dean wired the money from an overseas account to Jess so she could reimburse them, but still – renting a place, no questions asked. The Moores must trust you and Jess very much.”

“Well, they do. And Jess really pitched them on it. She feels bad for Dean, you know. She feels sorry for me being estranged from Dad, but she really empathizes with Dean. She’s very close to her mom and dad, and I think she wonders what she’d do if the parents she loves so much were – were toxic.”

They drove in silence for a while, and then Sam said, “This may be one of those questions I shouldn’t ask. I avoided asking Dean, but now my curiosity is starting to kill me. Where did the finger bones in the rubble come from?”

Jimmy smiled a little, but hesitated, as if he were wondering whether to answer.

Then he said, “I know a man who keeps a mummified hand in a glass case in his office. Well, he did.”

Sam shot him a brief astonished look before straightening his face. “Well, that’s – weird.”

“Indeed.”

“He gave it to you?”

“Not exactly. As it happened, I had entrée to his home’s electronic security system, so I was able to get around that. And Dean told me how to avoid the motion detectors in the office and gave me a lockpick that would open the case. He told me that the case itself had no alarm, just a lock. I’d got a to-go bag from a restaurant that night, so I could bring the hand home in that and keep it in my refrigerator.”

“Did you think your people had cameras or something in your house?”

“I didn’t know. I don’t know to this day. But from the moment that I told Dean about myself, anytime that we were in an environment that could be monitored, we didn’t say a word or make a move that wasn’t for the benefit of surveillance equipment. Dean is magnificent at improvisation, by the way. He reeled off a whole speech about the meeting, the parties involved, the house itself – It was all just to show me the entrances and exits from the house, but you’d have sworn he was deeply involved in arranging this conclave. 

“The only times we spoke freely were on burner phones that we bought that first night at a convenience store, when we were in areas that couldn’t be monitored. It was midnight by the time we were at the point of buying the phones, and we talked in the car for several hours more. Dean took the Impala back to the compound, examined it carefully, then didn’t take it back out again until the night of the explosion.”

“How’d he get both the Impala and the Mustang out there?”

“He drove the Mustang out there that morning. I drove out in the early afternoon for a final check of the premises – not saying anything while there – picked him up and drove him to within a mile of the compound. He walked the rest of the way, got the Impala, and drove back to the house.”

“So Dean stole the bomb, Jess found the rental properties, and you kept everything away from your agency.”

“Well, and I created the documentation for our new identities – I’d done that quite a few times. The physical passports, credit cards, and such. I actually began working on that Friday morning, after I confronted my boss.”

“I thought you didn’t come up with the plan to fake Dean’s death until that night.”

“As I say, I’d hoped that Dean would become a government informant and adopt a new identity after that. And I knew – ”

He was quiet for a moment.

“I knew I wanted to be with him.

“I took Dean’s picture from the office of a colleague who has so many pictures and documents about the Winchesters that I knew he wouldn’t miss it. The morning after we were notified that Dean would be killed, I went to see my friend who’s good with electronics.”

“She’s part of your team too?”

After a moment, Jimmy nodded. “She was very upset about the contingency plan. She hugged me when she came to the door, and I whispered in her ear, ‘Is your home safe from surveillance?’ Of course, surveillance is essentially her line of work. She thought I was joking for a moment. Then she realized that I intended to do something about the contingency plan. As soon as I explained it to her and showed her the documents, she began working on the electronic aspects of our new identities.”

“So the two of you worked against your own agency. Took some guts.”

“She’s very loyal normally,” Jimmy said. “But she also has a very strong sense of right and wrong, and feels some, feels some closeness to me. It’s like, I think it’s what it must be like to have had a sister.”

“You’re an only child?”

After several seconds, Jimmy simply replied, “Yes.”

Sam seemed to realize that there was more to Jimmy’s story, but he didn’t press. Instead, after a moment, he smiled and tried to lighten the mood. “I’d’ve loved to be a fly on the wall the morning that guy walked into his office and found his mummified hand missing!”

Jimmy smiled. “Particularly since I’d re-closed and re-locked the case and made sure not to affect anything else in the office.”

“Seems like Dean should’ve done that part. Isn’t that the kind of thing – ”

“Well, he was stealing the corrosion device that day, so he had a more important project.”

“I see. Good thing the police never put together a missing hand with the finger bones in the rubble.”

“Oh, the owner never reported the theft. I knew he wouldn’t. He prides himself on being an arbitrator and fixer for the underworld. He couldn’t allow himself to be associated with the police, not even if a crime affects him. It would endanger his whole raison d’etre.”

“I guess – ” Sam sounded hesitant. “I guess that’s why Dean knew about motion detectors and such in his office.”

Jimmy was obviously trying to figure out how to put this. “I don’t think Dean was in that office representing WinForce, or in any – official capacity.”

“Ah.”

Sam passed a semi, then said, “There’s a lot about your pasts that you two aren’t going to be able to tell each other, isn’t there?”

“Yes. I’m hoping that we’ll make new memories together.”

Sam nodded. “Good approach to take.”

“Unless – ”

“Unless?”

Jimmy looked directly at Sam, who of course could only glance at him before looking back at the road.

“I love your brother, Sam. I love him so much that even if I’d thought the contingency plan was the right thing to do, I’d have disrupted it to save him. I love him so much that, if he has decided he’d rather not be with me, I’ll leave him alone.”

“But it’s not like you can go back to your previous life.”

“No. I can’t. I would make another life without, without Dean. If that’s what he wants.”

“Cas, I – Jimmy. Jimmy, I don’t – I don’t think that’s what he wants. I’ll be honest with you, we haven’t discussed the future that much. Ever since he called and told me about – this whole thing, we’ve been pretty immersed in the present necessities. We haven’t really discussed the future.”

“It was the same with Dean and me.”

“Jess and I actually flew in a couple of days ago, you know. I said I wanted to talk to the police, find out about the case, but then we slipped away and went down to see Dean. I just didn’t like the idea of him sitting down there by himself.”

“I’m glad you did that. Although – ”

“This is a different car,” Sam said drolly.

Jimmy smiled. “You’re very smart, Sam.”

“Yeah, tell Dean that, would you?” The smile left Sam’s face as he continued, “He’s very quiet. He watches a lot of TV, talks about football. Like I say, he talks about Dad a little, trying to figure out if he did the right thing or not. But he only thing he said about you was, ‘I’ll talk to Cas when he gets here.’”

Jimmy nodded. One of his hands clenched lightly.

“I asked him not to come with me to pick you up. Mostly, of course, I didn’t want any chance of anyone seeing him, but also because I think you guys need to have a heavy-duty talk, and I figured the car wasn’t the best place for that.”

“Right on both counts,” Jimmy said.

Then he lapsed into another silence, staring out the passenger-side window.

Finally he said, “Would you mind if I drove? I’d like to have something to focus on.”

“Sure. I was thinking of making a pit stop anyway.”

They pulled into a convenience store that got its business from the highway and left a few minutes later, Sam sipping coffee and Jimmy devoting quiet, precise attention to the road.

It was dark by the time they left the highway. Sam guided Jimmy down suburban streets until they reached a small house in the middle of a block with good streetlights. Jointed cardboard skeletons on front doors and strings of orange lights told the time of year.

Jimmy pulled into the driveway and stopped the car. The porch light was on, and light shone behind a front room’s drapes, but other than that the house was dark.

“This is very nice, Sam. Please thank Jess again for me.”

“I’ll do that.”

Sam got out of the car, and after a moment, Jimmy followed suit.

As they walked past the window on their way to the front door, the curtains parted a bit, just long enough for Jimmy to see Dean looking out.

Dean opened the door for Sam, but hardly looked at him. His concentration was solely on the man in the trench coat, but his voice was almost casual. “Cas – Jim. Long time no see.”

“It seemed like a very long time to me,” Jimmy said quietly.

Silence. Then Sam said, “Jimmy, actually.”

Dean looked at Sam, back at Jimmy. “Yeah?”

Sam broke another pause. “I’m gonna go grab some dinner, maybe check in for the night someplace.”

“No, don’t.” Dean’s attention went to Sam. “You’re going back tomorrow, and I don’t – we don’t know when we’ll see each other again. Give us a couple hours.”

Sam nodded, smiling. “Will do. Jimmy, see you later.”

He stepped out the door as Jimmy moved further into the room. Then Dean closed the door.

“So,” Dean said. “Take off your coat. Have a seat.”

Jimmy took off his coat and looked around. Dean took the coat from him and threw it over the back of a chair, then walked over to sit on one end of a long sofa.

Jimmy followed him and sat on the same sofa, but at the other end, not right next to Dean.

“So,” Dean said. “I saw something online about the, the raid.”

“Yes.”

There was silence, and Jimmy shook his head. “Even now, I’m hesitant to talk about – the case.”

“That’s OK.”

“I’ll say this. Your father appears to have protected himself well electronically. But there are other sources of evidence against him.”

Dean nodded.

“I try,” Jimmy said, “I’m trying to put myself in your shoes, but I just, I have no frame of reference. I can’t imagine what you must be going through.”

“It’s bizarre,” Dean said frankly. “Sometimes I feel like I’m carrying a ton on my back. Then sometimes I feel like I’ve been doing that all my life, and the ton just fell off. I go back and forth.”

“It must be very hard.”

Dean gave a half-nod.

“I have – something of a speech.”

“Oh good,” Dean said. “Entertainment.”

“I do know something about feeling, feeling betrayed by someone you care for. But even so, the amount of betrayal you must feel – No. The level of betrayal that I committed, is beyond what anyone ever did to me. We worked together well to put together this plan, but over the last week I began to wonder if your cooperation and, and affection, were what you – needed, to save your own life. If you felt like you needed to do that.” He raised his hands a bit, dropped them. “You’re safe now. You don’t need my cooperation to stay alive, and even if for some reason I betrayed you again, I’d be in as much trouble as you – actually, more. What I’m saying is that, if you’ve had a week to think about us, and you’ve decided that you don’t, that you’d rather not be with me, I understand that. I’ll leave you alone, and I won’t try to cause any trouble for you.”

For a moment, Dean just stared at Jimmy.

Then he raised his eyebrows, shifted his gaze, looked back. “Well. That was – not the speech I was expecting.”

“What were you expecting?”

“I don’t know, something like, ‘You’re a criminal and you abetted a criminal for about twenty years, and I was damned if I was going to take part in a cold-blooded murder, but I’m an honest guy and I don’t want to be with a career criminal.’”

Jimmy shook his head. “I understood. Or, put it this way, I would like to have understood. I think, if I’d ever had a permanent family, I would have been loyal to them, even if they – even if I knew it wasn’t healthy.”

Dean settled against his arm of the sofa. “You’ve been real good about not telling me much about the other members of your task force, but you had to tell me a couple of things, and it made me realize something. The task force – They were as close as you ever got to a permanent family, weren’t they?”

After a long moment, Jimmy nodded.

“Seems to me like we’re in the same boat, then.”

“It would seem so.”

“So. I don’t hate you for doing what you did. And I hope you don’t hate me for doing what I did.”

“I love you,” Jimmy said simply.

Dean drew a breath. “I love you, too.”

Then he smiled. “Well, come on over here.”

Jimmy moved over next to him. Dean put one arm around Jimmy’s shoulders, drawing him close, and Jimmy reached across Dean to rest his right hand on Dean’s left.

“Where are we going?” he asked Dean.

“I’m thinking Vanuatu. Nice climate, no extradition treaty, and English is one of the official languages.”

“I do speak five languages.”

“Of course you do.”

Jimmy chuckled. “It sounds good, Dean. When?”

“Day after tomorrow? Give you a chance to at least buy a change of underwear. How much money do you have?”

“About three thousand.”

“I kind of wanted to do Sam’s thing, spurn the money. But Sam didn’t have to pretend to be someone else, and we really do need some funding to get started. Just to begin with, transportation for us and for the Impala. So I opened up an online account and transferred my Caymans account balance into it. Not even Dad knows about my Caymans account. We’ll need to be earning some income by the time it runs out, though.”

“With your car expertise, I have no question.”

“And you?”

“If there’s an opening in a store somewhere, I’ll do that. I work well with the public. Maybe save up enough to open my own shop – books or souvenirs or – ”

“Electronic devices,” Dean said, and Jimmy smiled dryly.

After a moment Dean said, “Think we’ll ever get back to the U.S.?”

“Maybe. We have to be extremely careful. If you were known to be alive, we would try to tell people that you just feigned your own death because you were tired of the life you were living, and if you let it be known that you were a thief, you might convince people that you’d stolen Bella’s gun to frame her because you felt like she was involved with people’s deaths anyway, something like that. But John’s lawyer might suspect there was more to it. If he could make the case that any federal agency was involved with this fraud, he could probably get – not just John’s conviction thrown out, but the conviction of the guard’s murderer, and any other convictions that arose from Bella’s plea deal. It would be a massive imbroglio.”

“Meaning a huge mess.”

“Yes.”

“Well, there might be a problem anyway.”

Jimmy sat up. “Why?”

“Dad didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to my cars, but he’d come to the garage and hang out sometimes when I was working. At some point, I’ve got to think he’s going to notice that the Impala’s missing. If he hasn’t already.”

Looking very serious, Jimmy nodded slowly. “Yes. That could be a problem.”

“If he even talks to anyone about it.”

“Why wouldn’t he?”

“Maybe he’ll just hold onto the info, wait to pop it when it would make the biggest mess. Maybe he’ll have people out looking for me to try to prove it before he lets it out. Or maybe he’ll never say anything. Basically showing me that he’s a better father than I was a son.”

“You were the best son you could have been, under tortured circumstances. He was not the best father he could have been.”

“Maybe.” And after a moment of silence, “So it sounds like – we won’t be coming back until after Dad’s – gone.”

“I’m afraid not.”

Dean nodded. “Probably just as well. I don’t want to think about what the task force would do to you if they found us.”

“Oh, I don’t think they’d do anything to me. First, I haven’t revealed any secrets – except to you, of course. Second, a mysterious death or disappearance – even framing me for a crime – would draw more attention than they want. And third – ” he smiled grimly – “I made it clear to my boss that if anything happens to me, the story of the contingency plan will be made public. I’ll create the imbroglio myself.”

Dean grinned in admiration. “Was that a bluff?”

“No.”

“Do I even want to know – ”

“Probably best if you don’t.”

“Well, OK, then.” Dean shook his head. “It just struck me – if Dad ever found us, I know he’d never kill me, but you might be in a world of hurt. You’re screwed no matter which of our families lashes out.”

“Well. We’ll have to create our own family.”

“You and me. And a dog.”

“Sounds good.”

“Sam’s going to visit whenever he can get away quietly and I can ship him part of the funds secretly.”

“We’ll make friends, build a network. And I wouldn’t be surprised if my friend who’s good with electronics showed up on our doorstep one day.”

“That’d be great. Will she have a name by then?”

“Some name, certainly.”

They drew back together. Dean squeezed Jimmy hard, closing his eyes.

Then he said, “‘Me and Bobby McGee’ was playing on the radio yesterday, and the line came on about ‘I’d trade all my tomorrows for one single yesterday.’ And I thought, it’s the opposite with me. I’d trade all my yesterdays for one single tomorrow with you.”

“Well, actually, that’s what you’ve done.”

“You too,” Dean said. “Except we’ll have a lot of tomorrows. We’ll see to it. We’ll make our tomorrows worth the trade.”

“This moment alone,” Jimmy said, “is worth the trade.”

THE END


End file.
